Interesting. And I'd say accurate.

What's also interesting is what good things will eventually shake out of stupid things. For example, we have the Temperance movement to that for the prominence ice cream parlors, tea rooms and coffee shops.

With the gay marriage thing, I expect that eventually that will be accepted as well, but prim church ladies, lesbians included, will still reserve the right to look down their noses at sluts and hos, despite the fact that Britney's whirlwind Elvis-chapel marriage and divorce hurt no one, not even herself.

Then again, while we no longer give out scarlet letters, there are certain circumstances where you can still be facing jail time for being a ho: Consider Lindsay England's adultery charges.

Of course, there's also impeachment for a blowjob.

I'm sorry but I find some of Matthew's discussion a tad confusing. Maybe I'm slipping into one of those alternate time streams?

The "social justice" branch of the conservative movement lobbied for and got Mr. Bush to deny funds to the United Nations for the Women and Children Fund with the excuse that the fund supported forced abortions in China, which it clearly did not. They used it as an excuse because one of their games in the third world is to appear as champions of the poor in order to proselitize, and they didn't want the competition. They have played that game before. Their "social justice" carries a heavily weighted noose inside it.

And if you think I've decided never to cut any of them any slack, no matter how unreasonable that makes me sound, you are right.

I think he's saying what I've been trying to get across, namely that most people, even the ones who voted for Bush, think they ARE doing the right thing.

It's using the fancy word "social justice". I use a made up concept that most of us are "do good" machines and it's just a matter of getting us to run the program that we agree with.

If you said "social justice" to some religious person, they might think that means they should stop gay marriages, ban abortion, and arrest unwed mothers, in that order. Most people on this blog, I think, have a different set of items on their "social justice" list, but it still has the same heading.

As you say, interesting.

"prim church ladies, lesbians included, will still reserve the right to look down their noses at sluts and hos, despite the fact that Britney's whirlwind Elvis-chapel marriage and divorce hurt no one, not even herself."

Observe what is implied here, possibly inadvertently: that an act is morally permissable if it cannot be shown to have hurt anyone (or possibly, anyone *directly*).

Naturally, far closer definition of terms is required, and there are a number of caveats that must be taken into account. For example, what is to be done when any act or refusal to act will cause harm to someone?

Nevertheless, this is a statement of a belief. (I do not mean to imply that it is actually Mr Murphy's until I am far better acquainted with his views.) The point I make is that this idea leads to a moral position. For the record, I think it a perfectly defensible one.

But it is not mine, for I would go further. I would hold that the major institutions and practices of society are in themselves estimable to the extent that they meet human needs. I would hold on that basis that marriage and the family are estimable institutions, and that that which does reckless damage to them is, on a prima facie basis, morally wrong even if no-one can be shown to be hurt. The "marriage" of Britney Spears cheapened and degraded the institution of marriage by reason of patent insincerity and worthlessness. It was therefore morally wrong, and I am as one with the prim church ladies, whatever their sexual orientation.

Now, before I get accused of conservatism and other crimes, may I say that I gain the general impression that most here would actually agree with this idea in principle. (Of course, I speak under correction.) It appears to me that many here would hold that doing reckless damage to estimable social institutions (for instance, habeas corpus pending a speedy, fair trial with the presumption of innocence) is in and of itself immoral, without it being necessary to demonstrate that any person has been hurt by it. That is to say, by recklessly damaging those institutions, the Bush administration is acting immorally, and our government in Australia is also acting immorally by acquiescing in it.

Which, as it happens, is what I think, too. And I, mark you, am a conservative.

I'm with Emma. I don't think the Christian right has been engaged in social justice at all. They aren't adding new programs, they are just demanding that they can either evangelize while performing the old ones (in some cases programs that Catholic and mainstream Protestant communities were already performing without the evangelizing) or they derail existing programs and divert their money to commercial enterprises.

If you want to stop abortion, the first thing you do is find out why women want abortions. When you learn that there is a direct relationship between rates of abortion and economics, you try to improve the economics. Banning abortions, in that context, isn't social justice, it's inhumane.

It's like why I defend pornographers and pornography. I never cared about porn. I wanted to know why sex crime happens because I wanted to stop it. It doesn't take 25 years of study to learn that sexual repression has a direct connection to rape and other sex crime, including sexual abuse of children. That's one of the first things you learn once you start studying sex crime. And the next thing you learn is that an obsession with punishing people is entirely unhelpful. It protects no one and just creates more sex criminals. So if you care about preventing sex crime, you absolutely do not run around trying to make people feel sexually guilty and repressed. Only two kinds of people think shame and repression and punishment are the answer: people too lazy and ignorant to bother to find out where the problem actually arises, and people who are more interested in repression than in preventing sex crime.

The administration and its minions don't actually give 15 billion additional dollars to fighting AIDS, they just say they will do so and divert what resources they do contribute to far more expensive plans that - surprise, surprise - benefit the pharmaceutical industry while by-passing the experienced and dedicated communities that have already been addressing the problem. Given that these are the same people who loudly announced that AIDS was sent by God as a punishment, it is unlikely they have any intention to treat or cure it.

Evangelicals who think it's more important to evangelize than to ameliorate poverty and disease are not charitable or Christian, they're just self-righteous. Every school child learns the story of the Good Samaritan. How did these people fail to take it's message? The Samaritan did not first demand conversion before he would help someone in need. The whole point is that the name of one's god or faith or tribe is far less important than one's works. The faith-based initiatives of the White House are not about the works (which were already allowed in law), they are about the evangelizing. If we are not supposed to want government's help for simple, material things, why should we allow politicians to "help" us in evangelizing?

The so-called social justice of the Christian right is about forcing their views on others and punishing those who don't agree with them. It's about preventing abortion to "save" babies and then allowing them to die of starvation and disease. And then terrorizing the rest of us with the prospect of converting or being similarly cut off from the means of survival.

If that's what "social justice" has come to mean, it is less than worthless.

Schmitt was right; Matthew has just been conned.

I could pick a fight with Avedon's perfected certainty about the root causes of sex crime, since the rather massive body of research into it demonstrates no such perfected certainty, but...

Let's go to the end statement instead, because I think it perfectly captures the fundamental lack of curiosity and the resulting gap in knowledge that I'm hearing from a lot of people.

So, you say, the religious right doesn't think that it's involved in good works, in the creation of its own vision of social justice: it is just about forcing itself on others with no aim other than to force itself on others. It purposely wishes to save fetuses in order to have them die later. It is purposefully devoted to terrorizing everyone else.

First, if that was offered as an explanation of militant Islamism, a great many of the people who are satisfied with a representation of the American religious right in these terms would object that this was too simplistic and manichean a view, would insist that we have to think about root causes of Islamic militancy, that we have to understand social contexts, that we have to disaggregate the diverse reasons why people are drawn into movements that commit terrorism. Etc.

But suppose you're satisfied with this sort of rhetoric as an empirical description of the motives of both militant Islamicists and the American religious right. Can I ask you this? Why are they that way? Don't tell me what you think they're doing, or what their motivations are. I want to know the reason for your vision of their motivations.

It's one thing to view a particular individual as unusually motivated by what we might term "evil". Then I think you can just say, "It's a mystery", or "It's because he was locked in a closet for hours as a child" or "It's because he's a genetic sociopath". It's another thing to view a huge swath of people who are concentrated in particular communities or institutions that way.

Marxism or certain varieties of Enlightenment liberalism (think Hobbes) are about the only disciplined body of thought that have coherent answers for you about large-scale social motivations. But the Marxist answer in this case would have to be a complicated one, because on balance, the religious right is less wealthy than their cosmopolitan opponents. They're not a classic capitalist ruling class who dominate because it is in their own economic interests to do so. You'd have to do some pretty intricate thinking about the nature of social struggle in this case, and it is by no means certain that you'd be able to preserve your own claims to total virtue and a clear demonization of them in reverse in the process. (This is basically the Thomas Frank insight in What's the Matter With Kansas). If you took a more Hobbsean view that all social life is the struggle of all groups for social power, that society is just a constrained form of the struggle to domination, then that too is morally neutral. They're just doing what you do, what all social beings do. The only mystery there becomes why they're winning and you're losing: under such a heading, you can't make a moral distinction between you and them that doesn't amount to, "I like me, and I don't like not-me; I want me to win".

Suppose you say, "No, it's not domination as a Marxist or Hobbsean (or even Nietzschean) might have it, not a quasi-rational or 'natural' form of social struggle. It's that the religious right is composed of people who all share a social pathology that was maybe legitimate or non-evil once, but which has become corrupted over time. Now it reproduces itself--they train their kids who train their kids and so on. It's a *culture*". This also makes for problems. If it's a "culture", what makes it different from all the other "cultures" that we appreciate, respect, give autonomy to, even when those cultures contain practices and beliefs we ourselves don't like, or even when those cultures intersect our own unfavorably? Would you accept "cultural" explanations of African-American poverty? If not, why not, if your explanation of the religious right is "cultural" in this sense? More to the point, on what grounds do you depart from a kind of value-free neutrality in viewing other "cultures" than your own to deem one wrong or morally objectionable? When a culture tries illegitimately to change YOUR culture? But isn't that the origin of one of the major complaints of the religious right, that the secular left in the 1970s insisted, and still insists at times, in intervening into the practices and everyday social life of their culture? If what makes the culture of the religious right objectionable is its attempt to change the culture of others, we had better take a look at our own. Moreover, this still doesn't answer a lot of questions. Where do cultures come from? What are their boundaries? Is their culture really separable from our culture? Who are "we", anyway? How did our culture achieve moral neutrality while theirs fell from it? What makes us (you) special? etc. If this is your line of explanation, you have a great deal of historical labor to do, to find out what makes a culture, how it came to be. You cannot be incurious or simplistic about it; you can't just say, "They want to dominate us". It's not an option under this heading.

Or suppose you decline and say, "It's really very simple: they're just bad people with the bad aim to make the rest of us live the way they want. I don't have to explain myself: they're wrong, I am right". That ends up making the religious right out to be millions of Dr. Evils, fathomlessly malevolent social beings who just want to conquer the world and get...one...million...dollars. That might be an ok way to come at the problem if we were all living in a nursery rhyme or a fantasy novel, but we're not. As a pure practical matter of politics, this view gives you absolutely zero direction about what to do next, given that I don't think there's going to be a James Bond who comes and blows up the Secret Headquarters of the bad guys for us. As a philosophical understanding of why you're involved in political struggle, it amounts to not much more than a tantrum.

Understanding the sources of other people's social conviction in ways that grants the authenticity, the ways in which those convictions make sense to those who hold them, doesn't make your own opposition to those convictions less effective. In fact, I'd argue the reverse. It may give you a much more powerful way to answer back to your opponents, it may give you insight into why they do what they do and what they may do next. It may also lead, in various ways, to the construction of lines of compromise or truce, but that's kind of a necessity anyway in the context of political struggle within a nation. What's the alternative to working out a lasting settlement of disputes with the religious right? It's either coming up with a strategy that permanently locks them into an electoral minority and imposes our views on them--I hope everyone on the left NOW sees why this is not a morally sound approach, because we can see how it feels--or we exterminate our enemies quite literally. Otherwise, you're going to have to live with them--doesn't that obligate you to try and understand them in terms more complicated than "They just want to rule the world?"

The alternative is converting them, by reason and exhortation and the words of authorities that they respect, in judicious combination, to an understanding that the oversimplified narrative to which we subscribed - for I was, for most of my life, one of those single-issue prolife voters - is an incomplete, false, distructive myth.

That assumes that most of them, like me, are simply naive and ignorant (in specialized ways) and well-meaning, and just have trusted liars and deceivers.

It will not work for the unscrupulous ringleaders, who know that they are spreading falsehood as they take the paychecks of the Hegemony to promote the chemicals and bullets that Olin makes and the corporate power blocks of Scaife et al.

It will not work for those who are simply so self-identified with the group they happen to belong to that they dare not question it, because to do so is to question themselves.

Those people *must* be contained and neutralized, by being discredited, their true associations and policies and code words exposed and held to daylight, so that all decent folk recoil in horror from the mass of various sorts of oppressions that are the foundation of the Plutocracy, wrapped in piety and carefully promoting the worship of Tashlan these past five decades.

If they are not a minority, as opposed to class 1, like myself, then we're screwed.

Timothy Burke: yes, but. . . .

Hobbes also points out that it's not a symmetric relationship.

One side is reality-based, and thinks that opponents are misinformed, and are amenable to reason; the other side is full of religious conviction, and thinks that opponents are sinners.

Once religion enters politics, the reality-based faction is left at a distinct disadvantage. I don't think it's the reality-based community that's in danger of over-simplifying the motives of the opposition.

Dave Luckett: "Before I get accused of conservatism and other crimes"...

No accusation forthcoming. Yes, you're putting forth a conservative position, but it's real conservatism, rooted in a concern for the hard-won achievements of human society, not the radical narcisstic damn-the-consequences "conservatism" of the current regime.

Which isn't to say I agree with your every premise or conclusion, but you're on the reality-based map as far as I'm concerned.

I think Matt's right, but I don't think he goes far enough.

These people have talked to me many times. (I live in the Bible belt.) What I have learned is that they are genuinely and sincerely concerned for what they consider to be the Number One Priority. It's not my state of well being here. Because I'm just dust or will be. It doesn't matter if I have a good job, health care, or the right to vote. Those things are nice and all, but they pale in comparison to the possibility of me enduring an eternity in hell. 72 years versus Eternity.

If you truly believe that only those who accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior will be saved from eternal hell, then the moral thing to do is save as many people as you can. (Diversity is, then, literally damning.)

More moderate Christians of my acquaintance believe that God is smart enough to figure out who's good and who's bad across religious lines. He'll send the nice Hindus to heaven along with the do-good atheists. But the extremists don't believe that God is that smart, forgiving, whatever. So the big social injustice is (to them) being denied the right of heaven by being denied the word.

In that sense, I see these people (some of them anyway) as deeply moral, but wrong. The big change isn't social justice as part of religion, it's what God means and what God will or won't do in the afterlife and therefore what social justice means. I think of all the missionaries in history and they're mostly (as I remember it) truly believing also that God will damn any but the chosen. So, prayer in school is good. More money for missions connected to faithbased whatever is good. Secular missons are bad. Etc.

Bob Oldendorf:

"The other side is full of religious conviction, and thinks that opponents are sinners."

"I don't think it's the reality-based community that's in danger of over-simplifying the motives of the opposition."

Are you sure about that? I don't know about you, but I would think that the 51% of the country isn't some undifferentiated mass of people, all of whom are convinced that we are sinners, etc. That isn't to say that such people aren't out there. But if you want to tell me that the entire Republican electorate is adequately represented by Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn, then I think you're on pretty shaky ground.

This isn't about using "reason" to teach people the error of their ways and convincing them to vote Democratic because our facts are better. It's about convincing them that we respect their values and lifestyle and beliefs, even (especially) when we don't agree with them. There are a whole lot of people in purple states who could vote Democratic, who voted for Clinton and would vote for someone like Obama, if they felt they were being treated with respect. Maybe we should do that?

I agree that it's nuts to start out with the idea that 51% of the electorate is passionately committed to the worst impulses of, say, 29% of them.

What Patrick said.

Well, yeah. That's just not quite the vibe I was getting, somehow. A lot of Republicans scare the hell out of me. A lot of Republicans don't. It felt like Bob's comment didn't distinguish between Group A and Group B, is all.

Dave--

The "So long as it doesn't hurt anyone" position is one I hold part for morality, part for practicality, whereas the respect of social institutions is something that I feel should be done as a matter of politeness and practicality as well, but veneration of these institutions is simply going too far.

Consider Britney's Las Vegas wedding and divorce. First off, if she wasn't a pop queen, no one apart from her immediate family would have cared, and secondly, if it weren't for the gay marriage brouhaha, no one would have talked about it for more than two days. Third, as such things go, it wasn't that much of a big deal, because if we're going to venerate social institutions, we have to venerate all of them, and American society has set up a situation where the drive-in Elvis chapels of Vegas function as a safety valve for elopements the exact same way that the anvil at Gretna Green did for Regency English folk. Vegas also has the "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" slogan, along with gambling, prostitution and free-flowing liquor.

We tried Prohibition and it didn't work, so what we have now is a motley assortment of liquor laws that vary from state to state and county to county and generally serve their communities better via the old doctrine of community standards.

As for estimable social institutions, social institutions are continually invented and reinvented, and some aren't particularly estimable. Consider the anti-miscegenation laws we used to have, which basically stated that white folk couldn't marry folk of any other race, though folk of any other color could marry as they pleased. I know one author of mostly Asian ancestry whose grandparents had to search through three states for a minister to marry them, and after he did, his community revoked his status as justice of the peace.

Part of the trouble we have in this country is the separation between the civil and the sacred, in particular the folk who want the civil to be treated as sacred, despite the fact that by definition it is not. Gavin Newsom was not officiating as any variety of holy man, and the San Francisco City Hall, impressive as the architecture is, is not any variety of holy place.

Then there are the people who want laws against the desecration of the flag, despite the fact that by definition, before you desecrate something, it has to be consecrated first, unless somehow we canonized Betsy Ross while I wasn't looking and Old Glory has suddenly become a religious relic.

It's not, for the simple fact that the US has ensconced (as opposed to enshrined) in the Constitution the First Amendment, which not only makes church and state separate but has set that up as an acceptable social institution for over two hundred years. I realize it's different in other countries, but it's our social institution here.

Coupla items:

* Matt Yglasias is correct, given his viewpoint (I suspect he didn't grow up Baptist). "Good works" have always been a big item with the churches. Sometimes it's direct, but most often it's money to save the heathen children. Now, one Fundie cultural attitude is that one must never question the motives of another Fundie. How much of that money actually goes to starving children is simply not a question that can be legitimately asked.

Right now, we have an utterly poisionous combination of this don't- ask- questions religion and don't- ask- questions politics.

* Along with this, the Republican way of doing business has been bait- and- switch. In general, the actual results of Republican policies have been the exact opposite of what was advertised. This never gets reported; you have to dig to find out about the real results of, say, "No ChildLeft Behind".

* I see the coming divide (and the eventual downfall of either the Neocons or the Republican Party) as being between the reality- based folks and the faith- based folks. At some point, "reality" is going to get up and bite us in the arse. Reality is nasty that way.

* Never compromise with a fanatic. You can move your position all you want; the fanatic will never move his. This is what we've seen in politics since 1980 or so; the hard right hasn't moved an inch and the Left has turned into Goldwater conservatives from trying to "compromise".

Never heard Yglesias so right wing before. Maybe he's dreaming of a job in the new one party system.

That's nasty and uncalled for. If Matthew were really that much of a soulless careerist, there are hundreds of thousands of words he's written in the last year, including recently, that mark him as a remarkably imprudent one.

Reality always wins.

Sometimes it sucks to be standing nearby when that happens.

Niven's Laws, 1a and 1b.

Mark is spot on. There are certainly many among that 51% who possess "a certain modesty concerning their intellects and a certain prudence regarding their actions:" attitudes recently claimed as the essence of conservatism by Philip Gold, but in actuality defining at least a penumbra of the reality-based community, whether conservative or liberal or whatever. I know some of them.

Those people can be reached, but you can't start by invalidating their most deeply-held beliefs. A good starting point is today's Gospel reading (All Saint's Sunday): the Beatitudes.

Dave Luckett said:
Observe what is implied here, possibly inadvertently: that an act is morally permissable if it cannot be shown to have hurt anyone (or possibly, anyone *directly*).

Exactly who is hurt directly or indirectly if two people of the same sex can have a legally recognized agreement for passing on their inheritance to their loved ones, adoption rights, power of attorney statements, and health insurance for spouses???

Your sort of response is often used as a basis for a "slippery slope" argument: "if we legalize gay marriages because no one is hurt directly, then they'll want us to legalize prostitution because its a victimless crime, and then cocaine because no one is hurt, and then, and then..."

Anyway, the argument for gay marriage is not that it doesn't hurt anyone. The argument for gay marriage is based in the idea that justice is defined by what people DO, not who they ARE.

Gay people want to do the same thing that straight people do: inheritance, adoption, power of attorney, health insurance. They'd even like to be able to buy a house together and know that if they split up, they'd have to divide the property via a divorce instead of whoever's name is on the deed gets the house.

The argument against gay marriage is usually based on some religious belief, but fundamentally, it boils down to who they ARE, not what they DO.

"Everyone can DO this, except people who ARE gay."

And every time we've created a law based on the way people ARE rather than what they DO, justice loses.

Everyone can sit at the front of the bus except people who ARE black.

Everyone can vote in an election except for people who are women.

Well, following the slippery slope logically, the next items you get to after gay marriage are polygamy, polyandry and polyamory. Which would be a good and logical thing in my book, especially since there are many people already in such relationships with no legal safeguards aside from the ones they can cobble together from existing marriage laws, and when divorce and child custody arrangements enter into such an equation, it can get really ugly.

As for prostitution, it's already legal in Nevada. And parts of Europe. If you want to sleep with a prostitute, all you need currently is a plane ticket, unless you live in convenient driving distance.

Whereas cocaine is too potent of a drug to be used except under doctor supervision, aside from chewing raw coca leaves when backpacking in the Andes, which everybody there does.

Kevin:

"veneration of these institutions is simply going too far"

Quite so, and I did not advocate it. I wrote "esteem" and "estimable" and added the important qualifier "to the extent that they meet human needs". I should have written "society's needs", I find.

There are no institutions incapable of reform, and there are no institutions that are not to be critically examined with reform in mind; but we were not speaking of reform, but of reckless damage for selfish, insincere or partisan ends, or through sheer negligence.

Of course unjust and immoral laws must be reformed or repealed. I, too, would regard the 'anti-miscegenation' laws you mention as such. Further, I am of the conservative belief that the state has no right to interfere in a citizen's private life beyond a wholesome concern for the legitimate rights of other citizens, which rights specifically do not include any putative right to be offended.

I would, for example, hold that the domestic arrangements and privately expressed sexuality of the individual are no business of the state; that attempts by the state to meddle in those matters are indecent. There are caveats to that position, of course, but we no doubt know them so well that it is not necessary to repeat them. I would also hold that it is indecent to enquire after, or take public notice of any kind, of these matters. They are nobody's business but that of the persons concerned.

That said, consider my position on Clinton and the famous headjob. I am of the opinion that adultery is a Bad Thing, see above. I am not entitled to take offence or public notice of it unless it directly affects me, personally. If Mr Clinton had answered "This is no business of the media or of the state or of the United States Senate. The matter is private, it in no way affects the discharge of my duty, and it lies solely between myself, my wife, the lady concerned and God," he would have satisfied me. At the very least I would have required specific cause for thinking that he had been in some way derelict in his duty to the nation. (This, of course, lays aside the fact that as a foreign national I have no right whatsoever to an opinion on the conduct of the President of the United States except insofar as it directly affects my own country or me personally.)

The fact that Mr Clinton chose instead to lie about it is a difficulty for me. (Or would be, if it were not for the last parenthesis.) But I would still hold that his answer is not material.

As for gay marriage, (takes deep breath) I hold that marriage is and always was, in all human societies, a means of meeting a specific need: that of nurturing, raising and socialising the offspring of a sexual relationship. Homosexual relationships, ipso facto, can have no such offspring. Therefore marriage cannot apply to them.

Of course, like all human institutions, marriage gets fuzzy at the edges. So does human sexuality itself. But arguments from the extremes leave me unmoved. It might well be asked, why then would I accept as a marriage a heterosexual union that does not or could not produce offspring? My answer is the conservative one: because it has always been so and it harms no-one; and that social institutions are not perfect fits to every individual. They never were, and never could be. The question is whether they meet society's need, not that of every individual.

To that end, however, I would propose a compromise, one that might meet a need, without changing what I would regard as an essential feature of an essential institution of human society. Thus: I suggest a civil contract by which any two persons name each other as next-of-kin, and for this contract to be a matter of public record and taken notice of judicially. I think that this would meet the needs that have frequently, and reasonably, been expressed. And if the people concerned wish to celebrate the signing of such a contract, have friends around, cut a cake, dance, whatever, who am I to object? If a religious denomination, or a representative of one, is willing to ceremonially bless such an event, what's that to me?

The questions of estate, power of attorney, medical treatment, visitation rights and so on, are all, so far as I know, met by such a device; or if not, ought to be. There might still be questions as to the legal parentage of any children of either of the partners, but that would also be so for a marriage.

Perhaps, given time, society would come to regard such a contract as the same as marriage, or equivalent to it, or a social institution in itself of estimable value. Perhaps not. I don't know.

But I do know this: there is no possible way in which society can be brought here and now to an acceptance of gay marriage as such. To say that is being part of the reality-based community, too. It will do those who think it should be so accepted no good to be indignant, or to plead the callousness of the situation, or to feel fearful. Social institutions are the artefacts of a society, not the products of theory. Politics is about what is possible. And tell me, what's in a name?

All right, that last was disingenuous. What's in a name is perceived respectability and social acceptance, a public statement of status. But those things are not legislatable, anyway.

I'm a conservative. What Patrick said. I value the hard-won gains of a civilised society, while accepting that they must be examined, and where necessary, reformed. That's exactly what I'm doing, here. But I hold that reform, especially basic reform, can only take place with the consensus of the society itself, and I accept that consensus may be long in coming. That may be deplorable, but I hold that the alternatives are all far worse. That's what makes me a conservative.

"Thus: I suggest a civil contract by which any two persons name each other as next-of-kin, and for this contract to be a matter of public record and taken notice of judicially. I think that this would meet the needs that have frequently, and reasonably, been expressed."

David, that's exactly what a civil marriage is. Gays just want the right to make such contracts extended to them. Some churches don't recognize some civil marriages as it stands; the Catholic Church doesn't officially allow communicants to divorce and remarry.

I'm confused.

Randolph,

How do you do? A pleasure to meet you. Please call me Dave. Nobody but my late mother ever called me David, and that form has certain resonances for me.

I regret that I must insist that marriage is not merely a civil contract (whatever the law might say), but a social institution. I am sorry if I was confused on this point. As a social institution it has a certain meaning defined by its very name; a civil contract is defined by its specific clauses.

For the point is this: a change to the law of contract by adding or changing a class of contract is one thing. A redefinition of a basic social institution so that it has a meaning different from that applying in all other human societies, is quite another thing.

I recognise that many here seek social change, not merely legal reform. Quite so. But if you cannot have the one now, will the other suffice for the nonce?

Dave--

The trouble is that, with the law, separate does not mean equal, even if it is equal at the moment the law is passed. The very fact of using separate terms makes for two classes of things which perks and privileges may be added or deleted from, because the law, in its practicality, declares that if two states are meant to be exactly the same, then you use a single term for them.

With marriage, as a legal term, you get a whole laundry list of perks and privileges, including but not limited to: name changes, joint property, inheritance, child custody, and not having to testify against your spouse in court.

From a social end, gay marriage, and polyamorous marriage, and yes, gay polyamorous marriage, are already a done deal, because social depends on society which depends on community standards. Three friends of mine--two men and a woman--invited me as a witness to their commitment ceremony, the same as I'd been a guest at the wedding of two of them years before. I know two different gay couples who specifically refer to each other as husbands, and have been together long enough to qualify for common law marriage, which is what all of their friends view their's as. What it's viewed as by those outside their social circle is immaterial, because they're not on the guest list. Moreover my cousin and her partner (female) have been coming openly as a couple to family gatherings for the past three years, most recently my grandfather's funeral, with full acceptance of the family, and last year when my aunt died, though her partner of twenty odd years didn't have any legal rights, especially as my aunt had forgotten to leave a will, my mother and her remaining sister made certain that my aunt's widow received most of her personal effects and property, including several valuable collections, excepting certain family heirlooms from my grandmother. And while my mother had been rather twitchy for years about admitting her sister was a lesbian, the end result was going with what she thought her sister's wishes would be, and if that isn't societal acceptance, I don't know what is.

That leaves holy matrimony for last. My three friends are Wiccan, and had a Wiccan priest preside over their polyamorous triad commitment ceremony. That's holy by the tenets of their faith, and matrimony as well.

The social and the holy are already covered. It's simply the legal that folk need right now.

That was well put, Kevin.

Dave, I just got legally married, last month. It's all working out very nicely, for us as well as for lots of other gay people across the country, and the straights who are part of their extended social circles. Most sensible people do generally find it a relief to be allowed to give up treating minorities prejudicially, after all.

I mean, really, did you notice how many words you had to use to justify treating some people badly? Going the other route doesn't take nearly so many, since you no longer have to drown out your conscience.

Hi Dave, this is Jax. I don't comment much, but in reading this, I got a bit confused. When you say this:

...why then would I accept as a marriage a heterosexual union that does not or could not produce offspring? My answer is the conservative one: because it has always been so and it harms no-one...

I'm not sure what you're implying, so I'm guessing you mean a heterosexual marriage (not resulting in offspring) is okay because it's the custom and it doesn't hurt anyone. I get that. But you also seem to be implying the counter theory that homosexual marriage is not okay because it is not the custom and it hurts someone, but in an earlier post you stated the Britney marriage did not harm her (i.e., someONE) but rather the moral sanctity of marriage (an institution).

Then you said:

...social institutions are not perfect fits to every individual. They never were, and never could be. The question is whether they meet society's need, not that of every individual.

So, first you said homosexual marriage is wrong because it hurts someone (read: individual), then you said particular institutions are okay in spite of certain individuals getting hurt? Am I completely misunderstanding you here? If so, please correct me.

Though, when you say the question is whether society's need is met over that of the individual, I'd have to say my understanding of the Constitution is the exact opposite of that. First and foremost this country is about protecting individual rights. This was the country men founded to get away from social institutions that only seemed fair for a certain group of people. If we still held the right of a social institution as supreme over the right of the individual, we'd still have slavery, and women wouldn't be able to vote or participate in the Olympics, to name a few.

In my opinion I don't think the question should be so much what institution will get hurt if we allow gay-marriage as much as what individuals will be harmed by denying them a right others have. And those individuals, in this case, are homosexuals.

Again, if I've misunderstood your position, please correct me.

Dave wrote this and I fail to understand it viz reality:
"As for gay marriage, (takes deep breath) I hold that marriage is and always was, in all human societies, a means of meeting a specific need: that of nurturing, raising and socialising the offspring of a sexual relationship. Homosexual relationships, ipso facto, can have no such offspring. Therefore marriage cannot apply to them."

Since I live in an area (Northampton, MA) where many gay folk have chldren together (science has fixed this) and nurture, raise, and socialise them just fine, thank you, why should marriage not apply to them?

Or should those folk who cannot have children the old-fashion way--or who choose to adopt--be denied marriage whether hetro or homo?

If we allow adoption, or allow scientific testube babies tobe born, and THEY have all the rights of (gosh) real people, why not their parents? Or have we just entered Velveteen Rabbit Town here?

Jane

Jax, not only that, but marriages not at all intended for children, but to seal legal distribution of property, between older people, have always been made - particularly back in those "goode olde dayes" when landed aristocracy was more open about what it was. (The houses of Buckley and Bush and Scaife don't have titles, and thus people think that they are not as much barons and earls as such folks ever were.)

But you're asking for logical consistency, from an intellectual conservative, and you're never going to get it. You're only going to get its erzatz replica, passed off as the real thing, which is Casuistry.

Trust me, I was raised one. I grew up in a house with subscriptions to The Wanderer and the National Catholic Register and National Review and many other more obscure conservative intellectual journals, all devoted to fanatically hunting motes and ignoring beams, like Crisis, which I know now is also a mouthpiece of Scaife and arms manufacturers as much as NRO and Town Hall - which is where I first encountered and absorbed the memes that the death penalty is the best prevention, being the best cure for crime, and that liberal-atheist-feminist-pagans hate and despise and persecute us, and venerate crime as much as they hate Western Civilization™ and that homosexuality is a dread agenda out to poison and destroy all civilization...

...it was the cognitive dissonance between all these things, and working in a city where I actually *met* gays and feminists and pagans and even some criminals, too, and realizing that the Stories didn't match up to what I was seeing with my own eyes, and questioning after nearly two decades the Narratives I had been given, such as that women didn't deserve to get payed as much because they weren't as valuable because they left to go have babies and squandered their training investment, or that people who didn't own houses shouldn't vote because we had no vested interest in managing the country responsibly--

--and here I am today, like a political asylum-seeker from Umbar enlisting in the defense of Gondor, tearing down everything I believed and carried signs for and voted for up until 1996--

But until a conservative of the Buckley-votary stripe confronts the contradictions and refuses to take refuge in enthymeme and casuistry, you will only be frustrated trying to argue logically. Alan Keyes is simply the extreme example of this, if you have seen the video of his "debates" - he is not an anomaly. I know. I was there - once.

Jax:

No, no, no. I do not imply that homosexual marriage is not OK because it hurts someone. It doesn't hurt anyone. If it did, there'd be no argument, surely. I don't think that it damages marriage as an institution, either. Again, if I thought that, I'd say so. I was arguing that acts that cause reckless damage to estimable institutions are wrong, but I argue against homosexual marriage on a quite different ground.

I hold that marriage is a social institution the primary purpose of which is to provide the means to bring up the offspring of the sexual relationship which it includes. If that is true, then homosexual relationships cannot be marriages.

pericat, you can, if you like, call this idea prejudice. You can, if you like, inform me that I am seeking for reasons to treat some people badly, and I accept the criticism, though I must admit that I can discern no such motive in myself. I have difficulty, as do many people, in that area. I apologise for my prolixity, and I'm saddened to hear that you think it was to drown out my conscience. I take it as a compliment that you think I have one.

If I might venture a suggestion, however, it would be that you might have more success in convincing me if you argued against the idea.

My critique of the religiously conservative's idea of social justice has always been that it's self serving and, while outwardly looks like something good is being done, while in actuality it amounts to a big fat turd sandwich. Sure, it's a sandwich and sure, those poor people are starving but is it really all that nutritious? Might there be a better way to help these people? Well, never mind that, here, eat this sandwich.

This allows the pasty, bloated do gooders to sit back and say, "Look! my two cents fed children in Africa and I didn't have to soil my Morals by handing out condoms! Go, me!"

Meanwhile, the kid that ate that awful sandwich now has dysentery and his sister just got AIDS because their wasn't a condom within a hundred miles of their village. But at least they have plenty of Bibles.

Dave:

I hold that marriage is a social institution the primary purpose of which is to provide the means to bring up the offspring of the sexual relationship which it includes. If that is true, then homosexual relationships cannot be marriages.

If that is your belief, then you would have to classify a large number of unions between one man and one woman as "not-marriages" because the couple either cannot or chooses not to bear children. Is that indeed what you believe?

Jane,

No, that is not my belief, and I do not believe that it follows from that definition of marriage. I answered that specific question:

"My answer is the conservative one: because it has always been so and it harms no-one; and that social institutions are not perfect fits to every individual. They never were, and never could be. The question is whether they meet society's need, not that of every individual."

Might I remark that one reason why that post was so lengthy was that I had to anticipate sensible, logical and reasonable questions like yours?

Beth,
I apologise. I was thinking "Beth", but for reasons beyond my understanding my fingers typed "Jane". I beg your pardon.

Regarding Dave's notion of the purpose of marriage:
"Legal" or civil marriage has more to do with property rights than anything else, and has been a tool of the ruling class in Western society for centuries.

To assert that having children is the purpose of marriage is naive. Yes, it makes things simpler administratively, in terms of children vis a vis public records, schools, etc., but for at least twenty years in the U.S. has not been a heavy issue with public authorities.

To me, the common element in the Bush-fostered agenda on gay marriage and other so-called moral issues is simply to demonize the Democratic Party so that those voters who are confused or confounded by the currents of social change, and particularly the specter of a woman's right to choose whether to have a child or not, will vote for what they perceive to be the safe, _traditional_ candidate. As Emma and others have said, what Bush and his ilk advocate is not moral at all, and their attempt to co-opt that lovely phrase, "moral values" echoes hollowly with the first president in my lifetime to espouse the term or something like it: Nixon--family values was his litany, and the "Moral Majority" followed shortly thereafter. Like Bush, it's such a mockery coming from the lips of such a deceiver.

Dave--

I noted you didn't respond to my last post. Did you agree and not want to comment, or were your comments for pericat meant for me, or....

Regardless, it seems that you're going with the proposition that marriage is not meant for joint management of property and legal matters for long term relationship, but only for those relationships where a man bangs a woman and, whether by purpose or accident, human biology makes a child.

One of my friends, recently married, also recently had a vasectomy, because neither he nor his wife want children, and more than that, she has a chronic liver condition and she doesn't need any more stresses on her health. I'm guessing that you feel they are not truly married.

Luckily for them, most of society as well as the law feels that they are.

I agree that Dave's argument, that the Purpose of Marriage is to have and raise babies, is strange. It is a religion-neutral answer to a religious question.

I am a Christian, but I would rather have a religion-neutral answer to the political question of gay marriage; I think civil unions fit the bill.

My religious idea of the purpose of marriage doesn't make sense for long outside of the Christian context where it applies. The meanings of sex, male, female, homosexual, and so on, all similarly don't carry. So what common discourse can we assume on these religious issues? How deep does the disagreement cut?

"I regret that I must insist that marriage is not merely a civil contract (whatever the law might say), but a social institution. I am sorry if I was confused on this point. As a social institution it has a certain meaning defined by its very name; a civil contract is defined by its specific clauses."

I have a lot of sympathy with this; for me, "homosexual civil union" means something like "take the rights, just leave us the name. We need it." But that is a whimper out of me, and I'm reminded of Homer's whine about "queer": "That's our word for making fun of you! We need it!"

Even if gay unions are eventually called marriages (I'm not being derogatory), people can always have their precious opinions on their status. We are always free to judge. After all, everything is permissible. But then again, not everything is beneficial.

Meanwhile, more meaty questions of life, death, and religion continue. The Christian's attention is best spent elsewhere.

Dave:

Granting, for the sake of argument, that "marriage" is solely "for the children" (I don't agree): gay couples have children. The fact that, generally, those children are not genetically related to both parents is not relevant, unless you're also arguing that adoptive parents, blended families, and remarried widows or widowers are not actually marriages.

Dan:

I welcome your good-faith effort to address this issue. However, during the debate here in Massachusetts, many religious organizations fulminated against both same-sex marriage and civil unions; preprinted signs specifically said "NO TO GAY MARRIAGE - YES TO JESUS - NO TO GAY CIVIL UNION". It's difficult to compromise with that viewpoint, for obvious reasons....

Dave wrote:
I hold that marriage is a social institution the primary purpose of which is to provide the means to bring up the offspring of the sexual relationship which it includes. If that is true, then homosexual relationships cannot be marriages.

Ah, the "it isn't natural" argument.

First of all, the legal ramifications of marriage happen the moment two people sign the marriage license and say "I do". You don't accumulate the benefits after the first-born arrives. You get it immediately. Any argument that attempts to somehow tie marriage explicitely to having children are completely ignoring the application of law.

The effects of marriage happen at "I do"

Second of all, given that the effects of marriage are immediate, it is purely on basis of prejudice that a gay couple cannot have these same effects immediately upon saying "I do" themselves. Since marriage is not legally defined on the basis of children, the lack of children is irrelevant.

Thirdly, if two gay women get married, they might decide to use the same fertilization techniques used by husband and wife couples to get pregnant and have a baby together. THey might also come to the relationship with a child from a previous marriage to a man or other relationship. And if they do this, and one of them works while the other one stays at home to take care of the child, then the legal protection that comes from divorce keeps the relationship fair if the two end up splitting up. Visitation rights, child support, etc.

Dan--

I was fond of the whole "civil union" idea until I realized that the two boxes didn't have the same toy prizes inside, and those who took "marriage" were still getting the better deal.

Separate is unfortunately not equal, and those freaking out about a name need to suck it up, the same as folk did when they realized that black people were now using the same drinking fountain as they were! The horror!

I completely agree; I'm not saying that I have the power to change the agenda of the religious right, or the one-party government (when those new Justices start swooping into office, anyway).

In the long run, I hope there is a Judgment at Nuremberg moment, when the voters of the right come around to my point of view. Then, maybe it will be worth talking about my compromise.

In the short run, it's true that the right militated against civil unions as well as marriages in this election, and the politics of civil unions are fragile at best. In a post at TAPPED ((NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.), Garance Franke-Ruta discussed it last weekend. I think it's a little hysterical, but basically on point.

It's Utopian of me to hope that religion may remove itself from politics here. Still, that is my hope.

And Kevin: yes, I'm sure my right sense of linguistic descriptivism will catch up to my burning ears eventually.

Dave, thanks for clearing up your point on homosexual marriage *not* hurting the institution.

I'll go back to the most important point of my earlier post: to hold as superior the rights of an institution (marriage) over the rights of an individual (homosexuals) is going against everything this country, this constitution stands for (equal rights for *all* people, not just some of them, or those of them who don't offend others). Regardless of the countless and well-reasoned logical arguments you have in favor of keeping legal gay marriage banned (and any other compromise maintains the banned stated), gay people are still denied the right to form a legal union called marriage. This is a breach of the two consenting adult's rights who happen to be homosexual.

In regards to this:

I hold that marriage is a social institution the primary purpose of which is to provide the means to bring up the offspring of the sexual relationship which it includes. If that is true, then homosexual relationships cannot be marriages.

It doesn't matter what the *purpose* of a thing is. Let's say that, indeed, this was the reason marriage was invented (which, I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument, will concede it). If this is being used as the reason for why an institution should not be ammended to include a certain type of person from its benefits, then you must logically enforce its purpose. Meaning, you must force all married people to attempt to conceive a child or adopt one.

It helps to know why an institution was created for general knowledge but the only thing that this government should protect (instead of the institutions) is the individual whose rights are being subjugated for the sake of the sanctity of an institution, which, in this case, again, is the homosexual.

The idea that Christianity without an element of social justice activism (other than charity, and legislating morality) is unusual and in need of special explanation strikes me as exactly the wrong way round. I think it's pretty much the default condition, and not just for Evangelical Protestants. It certainly describes the conservative presbyterian denominations in Scotland over the past century or more.

With all due respect to Dave Luckett, what I don't understand is why, as a conservative presumably concerned with the ongoing survival of hard-won civil society, he isn't vigorously in favor of gay people getting married.

I mean, good grief. Here we have a big, high-profile, creative, economically productive and largely urban sector of American society which, unlike almost any other group meeting that description, apparently wants to join churches, serve in the military, get married, and raise families. And somehow, according to people who call themselves conservatives, this is a bad thing?

It's stuff like this that leaves me thinking that, as Gandhi said about Western civilization, actual conservatism would be a good idea. Too bad there don't appear to be any actual conservatives.

I mean, I can understand why a conservative Catholic might look askance at "gay marriage." Marriage is a sacrament in Catholicism, and Catholicism is all about sacraments. But conservative Catholics don't run around trying to keep the state from marrying non-Catholics in non-sacramental ceremonies, nor do they make a big deal about whether those ceremonies should be called "marriage."

Which leaves everyone else with even less excuse.

Ken, the question didn't concern Christianity but rather periods of Christian revival in American history.

Whatever one's opinion of the efficacy or good judgement of the "social justice" movements spawned by previous periods of American religious revival (great awakening ahoy!), the fact remains that there were such movements; there was a sense of outward-directed action. What's notable and extra-creepy about the current period is that it's a circle looking inward. And that is in fact new.

"I hold that marriage is a social institution the primary purpose of which is to provide the means to bring up the offspring of the sexual relationship which it includes. If that is true, then homosexual relationships cannot be marriages."

I'm wondering where, exactly, that primary purpose was explicitly stated. I thought I'd try Genesis 2, which seemed like a likely source, but all it says is

It is not good that the man should be alone

Well, yeah. I don't really want to be alone. Nothing about children there.

I will make a helper fit for him.

Yeah, I could use some help.

So what culture is it, exactly, that says that THE purpose of marriage is making children? How about a few centuries of the European ruling class? Oops, nope, that's an instrument of foreign policy. How about all those cultures where it's a means of securing peace with neighboring tribes, or forging clan alliances, or ...

Dave, where exactly does it say that again? And why should my culture take that culture's word for it?

I'm not certain. What about the Temperance movement? Was that a matter of social justice, or just being a busybody in the way other people ran their lives?

Dave, I'm spotting a bit of a logical fallacy in your argument. You say that child-rearing is the "primary" purpose of marriage, but then argue as if it's the only purpose of marriage. Which, of course, it is not. If it were, sterile couples whould never marry, and gay couples with children (there are several million of these in the US, by the way) would be considered perfectly marriagable by everyone.

If gay marriage really hurt hetero marriage, then Massachusetts would have the highest divorce rate in the US, rather than the lowest. What I suspect is actually happening is that homosexuals are being made scapegoats for the high divorce rates in the Bible Belt.

Kevin, The Temperance Movement in its beginning and heyday was connected with a keen sense of social justice. I know we always see parodies of Carrie Nation and her axe (so much so that I had to pause and make sure I wasn't saying Lizie Borden instead), but the reality was much more complicated than that. There were just-plain-prudes who supported Temperance, but there were also people who saw it as a class war issue -- that the owning class was warring against the working class by marketing alcohol to them, keeping them unable to seize justice for themselves. They were like Black Muslims saying that to become free, one must be "clean."

It's always more complicated.

Equal rights to be married do cause harm. The religious and political authorities who used to be able to control all aspects of people's lives would have one less aspect they can meddle with. The more the authorities are expected and required to be reasonable, the less power they have to be arbitrary and capricious, to pick on whatever people they want to solely because it is expedient. Not that I care about the hurt feelings of tyrants, but they care, and they are letting us know about it as best they can.

Jim--

I think the trouble is that Dave was just stating his personal belief of what marriage is, and so, ipso facto, what doesn't fit that definition isn't marriage in his book, which isn't necessarily the King James Bible.

Thankfully, society is composed of a whole lot of individuals with a whole lot of other books, and I could mention what's in mine, except for the fact that the books that matter most in this case are those of the individuals to be married, the ones who say "I do" and ideally live out the rest of their lives together until death do them part.

Compared to that, the opinions of some person on the other side of the planet who they are unlikely to ever meet are pretty inconseqential. Friends, neighbors and relatives--those opinions are a little more consequential, but that's why you send out invitations to your wedding or reception so you can have folk to stand by you, bear witness, and ritually bless you with gifts that will be with you for the rest of your married life.

I have a friend whose own parents didn't come to her own wedding because her father didn't approve of her marrying a chubby blond guy, as opposed to some guy of pure Korean stock. Lucky for her, the opinions that count are those of her and her husband, and they have a legal contract from the State of California to back them up and help them live their lives, no matter how much her father still disapproves of her lifestyle and his biracial grandchildren.

Rather sucks that my gay friends don't have the same legal opportunities and protections.

The Temperance movement was a huge mistake, but it was definitely driven by more than mere busybodyism.

The rate of alcohol consumption among 19th-century working-class Americans was absolutely staggering by modern standards, and you can imagine the side effects.

I'm going to split hairs and say that the Temperance movement was an excellent idea, and that its later stage/successor movement of Prohibition was an awful one. The idea of working-class people banding together to reinforce each other in self-discipline and self-betterment - Temperance groups were big on adult education - is one well worth backing. And the question of just how and why reform movements go bad is one worth study just right now, since it's going to be a big risk for embittered folx I like and respect during these next few years.

Lucy--

True enough. And the autobiography of Carrie Nation is an interesting read.

Been a while since I read it, but it has an interesting note about Grant's lips rotting off from cancer caused by sucking on cigars--a good reference for when smoking apologists try to play the "We had no idea it could kill you till the 60s" card.

Kevin --

Sure, I agree with all of that, that was sort of my point: what book is Dave reading from? When terms like "is and always was" start flying around, "personal opinion" is a small thing, unless the person himself "is and always was" (someone else this morning on another thread used the line "6000 years of recorded history") -- it leaves the realm of "what it is for me" and becomes something that requires some sort of backup. Was it really? Show me.

Patrick, point taken. But it looks like a revival of the kind of Christianity with which I'm most familiar. Mind you, the revivalism-activism pattern exists in British history too, in Methodism for instance, and the Free Church.

About objections to gay marriage - I can see why some non-Catholic Christians might object to putting what looks to them like a big seal of civic approval on sin. From the background I referred to earlier, homosexuality is the real non-negotiable among the private sins. Fornication and adultery don't even come close, perhaps because there are no destroyed cities called Fornica and Adulter on a plain somewhere.

I think everybody ought to have civil unions and if people want to additionally have a religious ritual, that's okay for them. The government should get out of the business of marriage.

Marilee--

Mostly in agreement with that statement, excepting that I don't think the government should have been in the marriage business in the first place, but since it is, it's kind of commited to folk who were already married under its laws.

Besides which, what in essence would be the difference between a civil union and a civil marriage anyway, if conferred as part of a civil ceremony by a justice of the peace? It seems kind of pointless to declare that all marriage certificates are now civil union certificates, and henceforth will be known as as such, when it would be simpler and affect less people to instead declare that all civil union certificates are now marriage certificates, rather like the situation where California years back declared that DOs were now MDs, because Doctors of Osteopathy and Medical Doctors both were licensed to practice the same things, had the same training, and the old philosophical split in the medical colleges was starting to get sewn up.

Holy Matrimony can still be the province of religion, and if your church doesn't want to marry gay couples, interracial couples, couples of different faiths and so forth, they don't have to. In fact, your church can keep crossing off lists of undesirables from those it will allow within its doors until inside, you can have your One True Faith, while outside, everyone dismisses you as a weird squirrelly cult.

Jax's answer to Dave reflects my own view. I don't think the legal system ought to be dealing with questions of "immorality". It ought only to deal with questions of actual harm done to actual people ... in which case the obvious harm done to gays who can't get into hospitals to visit their partners, who can't get health benefits for their children, etc., far outweighs any "harm" done to people who take the Bible literally.

I hope this isn't spamming, as I posted the same comment to Making Light, but I thought both of you might like Digby's post on the red-state/blue-state division as seen through American history? [I blogged it here]

Bruce, thank you. That's exactly what I was talking about. And I don't think it's hair splitting: I think different social forces were at play by the time of Prohibition, though I'm sure I would have to spend some time rereading things before I could elaborate.

"It helps to know why an institution was created for general knowledge but the only thing that this government should protect (instead of the institutions) is the individual whose rights are being subjugated for the sake of the sanctity of an institution, which, in this case, again, is the homosexual."

Good point, Jax. If I were to concede that homosexual marriage is a right of the individual, it would be crushing. As it is, it gives me considerable pause. Does "the pursuit of happiness" necessarily imply such a right? Let me think about this...

"When terms like "is and always was" start flying around, "personal opinion" is a small thing, unless the person himself "is and always was" (someone else this morning on another thread used the line "6000 years of recorded history") -- it leaves the realm of "what it is for me" and becomes something that requires some sort of backup. Was it really? Show me."

Jim, to show you that marriage - or any institution - always had such and such a property - whatever property we choose - I would have to demonstrate that the property was present in each and every moment of human history. I can't do that, and if that is to be the test, then I can't pass it.

Perhaps if I climb down a bit. I believe that marriage is the institution by which society secures the upbringing of its children, and that this is one of the very few constant properties of marriage throughout human history. I think, in fact, that it is the only such constant property. I can't prove that without exhaustive analysis of each and every human society - an impossibility - but is it so unbelievable as all that?

If that is granted, and I confess that it need not be, then it must follow that providing the means for the upbringing of children is a vital property of marriage. But homosexuality has been present in each and every human society also, and homosexual couples have always raised children. (Curiously, I have the feeling that you will not require me to show you that that is the case.) Why, then, are the societies that accord to any homosexual relationship the same status as marriage so very rare? (I might have written "unheard-of", for I have never heard of one, but that is unnecessary.) My answer is that the property of providing upbringing to the offspring of a sexual relationship must be an essential property of marriage, overall.

Of course this argument works only on the level of a whole society, and does not cover all individuals within it; but anyone who expects that a social institution will fit all persons in the society and function strictly according to logic is asking for a very great deal.

Perhaps they ask it rightly, see above. All the same, attempts to change a fundamental social institution without consensus always founder, and usually have catastrophic consequences in proportion to their support. Some here apparently believe that consensus already exists. If that is so, then tell me, why are numerous US states (and, alas, my own jurisdiction) rushing to legislate to define marriage as valid only between one man and one woman?

*delurking*

Dave:

I could respond to a few statements in your last post, but I'm really most curious about this one:

"All the same, attempts to change a fundamental social institution without consensus always founder, and usually have catastrophic consequences in proportion to their support."

I believe you've made that claim during this thread on more than one occasion (checking...yes, found similar language in your second post), and I wonder how well you think it applies to the issue of interracial marriage. At the time of the court cases that finally overturned bans on interracial marriage (the most famous being Loving v. Virginia), it is widely reported that the US population opposed interracial marriage in enormously greater proportion than they currently oppose gay marriage (the figure most often cited is 92%, as compared to 65% currently opposed to gay marriage and 35% opposed to civil unions - based on stats from the last election in those states where gay marriage bans were on the ballot).

Do you think interracial marriage was a special case, where the consensus of society was not necessary?

Or do you think that legalizing interracial marriage has had catastrophic consequences?

Or do you think the reported opposition to interracial marriage is exaggerated (I don't have a source at my fingertips, and my memory may be incomplete or completely incoherent, but the 9 of 10 stat is referenced again here), or that opposition to gay marriage is underestimated?

Or perhaps that the comparison between the two marriage disputes is not relevant for some reason? I'm aware that your justification for restricting marriage to heterosexual couples, child-bearing, would remain valid (I don't agree that such a definition is valid, but I'll stipulate it here for the sake of this particular point) in the case of interracial marriages. Would you contend that, since interracial marriage doesn't violate your definition of marriage, the fact that society had not reached consensus on this (to them) drastic change was not important?

I should really stop trying to guess your answer and just let you respond, shouldn't I? Heh...

Dave, you wrote:

Perhaps if I climb down a bit. I believe that marriage is the institution by which society secures the upbringing of its children, and that this is one of the very few constant properties of marriage throughout human history. I think, in fact, that it is the only such constant property. I can't prove that without exhaustive analysis of each and every human society - an impossibility - but is it so unbelievable as all that?

It's only unbelievable if you haven't made a study of other cultures, both current and historical. But the analysis doesn't have to be exhaustive. Throwing my diploma on the table, I've got a BA in Anthropology, and I'll quote a catch phrase from my African Studies class: "Mother's Brother."

This is well known enough that the joke in anthropology circles is to call Malinowski the "Mother's Brother of Anthropology." But I digress.

The point is is that the standard West African kinship pattern is the Mother's Brother pattern. That is to say, a woman stays with her family, while the father of her children does not, being from another, and possibly even rival tribe. Discipline for the children is provided by the mother's eldest brother, and, in the absence of any brothers, by the eldest aunt. The biological father, when he visits, takes a role similar to that of a favorite uncle or a godfather in European society, that of an occasional good-time Charlie who takes the kids out for fun outings and brings them presents, but isn't responsible for any discipline.

Simplifying terribly here, but most African Americans are descended from West Africans, yet when the old kinship patterns are echoed here, you get folk screaming about absent fathers and children being raised by their uncles and a whole lot of foofarah about people not understanding any kinship structure different from that depicted in "I Love Lucy."

Having a child raised by the mother and the mother's brother or the mother's eldest sister is a perfectly workable kinship pattern, and not even a rare one, so screaming about the naturalness of the Lucy + Ricky + Little Ricky nuclear family is to ignore the entire body of work of anthropologists throughout the ages, not to mention the bible itself, which if you note has more than a few instances of multiple wives, folks knocking up the handmaid as a surrogate mother, Onan having sex with his sterile brother's wife until he decided not to and....

Hell, if you go with the Immaculate Conception thing, Jesus himself was raised by a man who was not his biological father. If raising a child who is not biologically your own is good enough for Joseph, why not for someone else? And if sperm donation is okay (Onan) and immaculate conception is okay (Mary), then a lesbian with a turkey baster seems on pretty firm theological ground. Likewise, since Rachel couldn't conceive and had her husband sleep with her maid Bilhah (Genesis 30), it seems surrogate mothers are just fine.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but I think the thing that freaks the Christian Right out is not people raising kids which are not biologically their own but people in same sex relationships raising kids and teaching them that it's not a sin.

Homosexual sex is about as much of a sin as lobster and porkchops, which is to say, forbidden as an abomination by Leviticus and various other religious texts, considered a tasty treat by millions of others.

No one is going to die because the people next door can legally eat lobster and porkchops. Likewise with having their marriage legally recognized.

You may still be grossed out if you wish, however.

A couple of nitpicks:

Onan's brother was dead, not sterile. (Well, okay, being dead does normally make one also sterile, but...)

Mary's conception of Jesus was the Virgin Birth, not the Immaculate Conception. The IC applies to Mary herself: she was born free from Original Sin (in a sort of retroactive grace from her son's future sacrifice) so as to be a fit vessel for the Son.

I'm actually an atheist, I just love to nitpick. (grin)

I hold that marriage is a social institution the primary purpose of which is to provide the means to bring up the offspring of the sexual relationship which it includes. If that is true, then homosexual relationships cannot be marriages.

pericat, you can, if you like, call this idea prejudice.

I could, I suppose, instead I'll just note that it's false to observable fact. Neither the law nor 'society' make any provision for automatically dissolving any marriage which is not consummated, nor any which is not blessed with children genetically related to both partners. Having once taken oath to be married to each other, both partners are considered, legally and socially, to be married as long as they assert that they are, and in most cases, beyond.

You might have better luck maintaining that marriage is one of the institutions by which families extend their reach, and that children are among the usual products of this. Not the sole purpose, but certainly part of the whole picture.

Of course, if your purpose in all these flights of reason is to justify, by hook or by crook, excluding same-sex marriages, that definition won't help.

If I might venture a suggestion, however, it would be that you might have more success in convincing me if you argued against the idea.

I did, though. You may not have noticed, since you seem to think this is a hypothetical discussion not subject to proof. I presented you with an empirical argument: the fact of my legally binding marriage to another woman last month. In the society and country in which I live, this sort of thing has been going on for a bit over a year now. The social fabric remains unrent (I check every day, when I have my morning coffee, for blood in the gutters). The government has not fallen, drat it all. In short, it's been a complete non-starter when it comes to loosing mere anarchy upon the world.

Actually, it rather seems to have had the opposite effect.

Jim, to show you that marriage - or any institution - always had such and such a property - whatever property we choose - I would have to demonstrate that the property was present in each and every moment of human history. I can't do that, and if that is to be the test, then I can't pass it.

Of course I don't expect you to prove such a thing. I'm glad you recognize that you can't. My complaint was that you were, and are, asserting it as if it had already been proven.

Fortunately, it's much simpler to dispose of the question from the other direction (hint: finding one is a much shorter search than finding none), and Kevin already addressed this a little while ago. Marriage is in many cultures not the most important thing in childrearing, nor childrearing the most important thing in marriage (google "alliance theory").

You might be on somewhat firmer ground to suggest that family exists to support the rearing of children, which would cover those cultures where, say, the "family" is a multi-generational group of women raising their children, and the "husband" lives with the other men aside from the odd "midnight hour". But, y'know, families serve a lot of other functions too, and there's a lot of families with homosexuals out there already.

An Irish couple who were married in Canada are currently trying to force the Government here to recognize their gay marriage in the courts.

I don't think they'll win, but perhaps they are already thinking of an appeal to Europe. Even if they lose, there are moves towards recognition of gay marriage afoot in the legislature, although that will take some years at best.

pericat -

Of course, if your purpose in all these flights of reason is to justify, by hook or by crook, excluding same-sex marriages, that definition won't help.

See my post above on arguing with conservative intellectuals. -Yes.

If I was still on the Dark Side, I could twist history and "nature" into pretzels for hours, carefully ignoring the fact that adoption of kids for inheritance purposes by childless couples, either because their children had died, and they were too old, or biological infertility at childbearing years, was standard operating procedure in Roman times, and that various forms of fostering as well as recognized polygyny have been in operation in Western Europe, and in European immigrant communities here, back in those "goode olde dayes" when everyone was straight and square. The census records, as well as family lore, tell different stories.

--I have, btw, come around myself on the issue of gay marriage and civil unions, in the past year, because of it being explained to me as matter of guaranteed legal rights - I think that heterosexuals just don't ever think about those embedded rights that come with the amalgam of church/state weddings, because we take them for granted (like whites not seeing discrimination happening.)

Since I *tend* on an emotional level to the "marriage is just legalized prostitution, even if there are exceptions" view, my thought was in part, "Why would you guys *want* to get involved in our control-freakiness in regard to relationships?" After all, marriage is expensive, and a lot of het couples don't get married, either. But when I realized it came down to matters of financial rights and other legal issues, emotional aspects of it went right out the window.

And I *think* they would do so, if the justice element was recognized, for more "nice" conservatives (I do not speak of the Hannity/Limbutt/Coulter brigade) because appeals to justice are the core of conservative Catholic intellectual argument - but then, I'm not one any more, because they really *mattered* to me, and the cognitive dissonance between our ideals and reality was insupportable.

Speaking of nitpicking. I thought that the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah had to do with (among other things) men offerring their own daughters (of proper marriages) to whore for other men.

Maybe I am misremembering and the Bible is in another room.

Jane

Kevin:

Mother's brother: come to think of it, in traditional Australian Aboriginal society, a similar pattern holds for some aspects child-rearing. That is, brothers of the mother are responsible for teaching specific skillsets to boys, and I *think* sisters of the father for girls. But parents remain cohabitors and primarily responsible for the basic support of their children, and in any case an Australian Aboriginal kinship group in the same moiety shares all resources. The West African pattern you cite is unknown to me, and it certainly gives me severe difficulties.

I might, I suppose, point out that in citing the pattern you used the term "father of (the mother's) children" rather than "husband", and I suppose I could ask to what extent this can be called a marriage. The man concerned would appear to be no more than a regular visitor with sexual privileges. Nevertheless, this does put a considerable hole in my idea.

(One question: how do they ever get men who have sisters