"What homosexuals need is the love of another homosexual."

Once you throw a stupid remark like that into the debate, there isn't much point in continuing.

I continue to be astounded at how quickly the gay lobby was able to convince so many in the middle that it is about liberation from oppression, and not about social engineering. This could only have happened among a population that is so confused that it A) thinks marriage is just about love; and B) wants the state to define and regulate love.

The only argument that holds water is the utilitarian one.

If most of our societal problems derive from family dysfunction,then extending a privilege to 5% of the population at the expense of the other 95% is immoral and unprofitable.

Just as the "right" of women and gays to join the military is irrelevent if it undermines the military's ability to fulfill it's institutional function,so the gay "right" to marry is irrelevent if it further undermines what remains of our institutions and creates more social dysfunction.

Peter:

The population is indeed so confused that it thinks that marriage is about love.

So, does Hayek argue that social institutions are not simply a vestige of a dark and ignorant past which should be jettisoned ASAP and replaced with more "rationally" planned and designed structures which reflect enlightened, modern values? What actually is versus what one might prefer? What a rube. Marriage is only a social construct which in the interest of the greater good, i.e. equality, should be open to all. Since modern man has gotten past his superstitions based on religion, and the ability to recieve benefits certainly outweighs any arbitrary definition on "right" and "wrong", if homosexuals wish to marry let'em. I mean, what harm could it do?

There is another argument: "Homosexuality," is, after all, a behavior. It means one thing in normal civil society and another thing in prison, or perhaps at sea.
Individuals may possess varying predispositions to this behavior, but it is the interesat of civil society to discourage it among those who remain, shall we say, ambivalent to it. This we do by honoring the desired behavior and stigmatizing the deviant. The harnessing of the sexual impulse to male-female pair-bonding and the prevention of loathsome and incurable disease remain valid social objectives.
Thus restricting one's sexual behavior to heterosexuality remains a virtue, and, as Cato the Elder used to say, "He who robs virtue of honor robs youth of virtue."

Presuming you meant this seriously:

"Marriage is only a social construct"

without which our society is collapsing beneath narcissism,hedonism and nihilism.

"which in the interest of the greater good"

it isn't about the greater good,it's about bending society to appease on small out group at high cost to the rest.

"Since modern man has gotten past his superstitions based on religion, and the ability to recieve benefits certainly outweighs any arbitrary definition on "right" and "wrong", if homosexuals wish to marry let'em. I mean, what harm could it do?"

Which confirms my points about narsissism,hedonism and nihilism.

Playing devil's advocate her ebut given how heterosexuals have done an exceedingly poor job in upholding the sanctity of marriage what with quickie divorces, rampant adultery and promiscuity shouldn't it be considered somewhat flattering that gays consider marriage a signficant enough social institution for them to want to join in?

M. Ali:

As the gay community's perception of marriage is pretty much the same as of those heteros of whom you speak, the answer is no.

According to Hayek, it is time to overturn the American Revolution and return to the divine right of kings.

There is an implied, but far from certain, assumption throughout this: that gay marriage has anything to do with heterosexual marriage.

Peter:

Communities don;t get married, individuals do. Further, it is very brave of you to assert what an entire community thinks of the institution. Do you have something to back that up with?

Jeff:

Sorry, I spoke too quickly. Apologies to all those gays who see marriage as a solemn, publically undertaken vocation whose principal purpose is procreation and the care of children.

Your statement that communities don't get married is interesting. I have yet to see you make any case for why the state should be involved in defining and regulating an institution whose purpose is to give adults a means of celebrating and expressing love. Why not give it a go?

Peter:

So do you apologize to those gays who see marriage as a solemn, publically undertaken vocation?

Or to those heterosexuals who marry, but cannot have children?

Why should the state be involved? Good question. Property and taxes are two that occur right off the bat. That seems to be reasons enough for the gov't to get involved in darn near about everything.

Jeff:

You are equivocating and you know it. Answer the question.

If you grant that "what homosexuals need is the love of another homosexual", it still doesn't argue for the need for same sex marriage. As we learned during the 60s, love is free and does not require a piece of paper.

This fight isn't over the right to love, it is about the gay community demanding equal access to an institution that confers a symbolic standing and level of honor to those who participate in it. That standing and honor belongs to marriage because it is the central institution for procreation and child rearing, not for adult love.

It is like demanding to be awarded military medals without having to serve in the military. We don't award military medals to promote self esteem, but to reward service to the nation. The recognition of marriage only makes sense as a recognition of service to the community in the form of procreation and child rearing.

If it's just about love, then there is no reason for the state to recognize it or to arccord it any status. Finding your soul mate does not rise to the order of a service to the community.

Well said, Robert.

Peter:

I wasn't equivocating. Name me one area of life involving property and taxes the Government isn't involved in?

Civil marriage has not the first thing to do with having children, and the requirements to sustain the relationship have no bearing on the gender of the participants.

Robert:

Your analogy is mistaken. Homosexuals participate in life just as much as the rest of us. They only ask the ability to have the same refuge you and I enjoy.

For your analogy to make sense, then couples who aren't capable of having children should not be allowed to marry, and those who prove themselves incapable over time should be forcibly divorced.

I lived in England during the Falklands War. Afterwards, the Catholic Church refused to marry a soldier to a nurse he met during the conflict. It seems his injuries, which provided him the opportunity to meet the nurse, prevented him ever fathering children.

Do you, advocate offering him a medal while preventing him marrying?

Nicely done, Robert. Most changes in family law since the sixties have been effected by progressives' focussing exclusively on the tragedies of the dark edges of family life or relationships--the abused wife, those overwhelmed by parenthood and financial stress, the terribly bored, the sexually frustrated, yearning gays, etc. The unstated assumption is that the mass of "ordinary" folks are perfectly happy together and require no support or honour from the community. Whatever general statements one makes about marriage and family, there are always lots of exceptions, as this intensely human institution is made up of very fallible humans.

Jeff steadfastly refuses to concern himself with this, and assumes intact families are islands of individual choice and ongoing romance whose cohesion and health are completely independent of the world around them, who owe nothing to their community and are owed nothing by anyone--they made their choices and, in their young, starry-eyed love, understood perfectly what it all meant. That is why he can't see soaring divorce rates as any other than a failure of individual love and repeats the canard that gay marriage can't possibly have any effect on the institution as a whole. Perhaps as a proud military man, he will reflect on your excellent analogy that leads to the conclusion that combat troops have made a free choice and deserve no more honour or consideration than the brave, patriotic filing clerks at the Pentagon.

Jeff,
You are pointing to the tragic border areas of marriage. Any societal rule will need to draw boundaries which will exclude some in a seemingly cruel way. But expanding the border to include those few refugees will create new ones who lie just outside that new boundary.

It is interesting that you use the word "refuge" to describe marriage. It is true, as with the comraderie of a military unit, that marriage can be a refuge, but most people who look at military life from the outside would not consider it a refuge. You are sent into battle, shot at, and forced to endure incredible fear, pain and anguish in service to your country. The "refuge" factor is a compensating factor, not a defining feature.

Likewise with marriage. Marriage is full of pain, sacrifice, and the potential for great emotional trauma. People can become as emotionally damaged from marriage as they can from combat (some exaggeration here). Like military life, marriage is primarily about duty and sacrifice, secondarily it is about refuge and sanctuary. With both, the satisfaction that arises comes to those who wholeheartedly and completely surrender themselves to the duty of it. Equivocators and second-guessers will never get there.

They are both duties because they are both absolutely essential to the ongoing survival of the community. Marriage is not a lifestyle, it is a life-requirement. In the past, both military duty and marriage were not optional, pretty much all citizens were conscripted into their service. We can afford an all volunteer military now, and we believe, because of lessened mortality, that we can afford an all-volunteer procreation "service". Whether this is true is yet to be proven. But unless we maintain the value of the honors that we bestow upon these services, and do not dilute them by universal bestowal, then expect the number of people who take these duties upon themselves to shrink.

One more point. People are free to love whom they will. And the fact that all people cannot earn the honor of marriage (or military service) does not mean that they cannot earn other honors within society. Let us not covet our neighbor's honors.

Robert:

Wow.

Robert:

You have stretched the analogy well past the breaking point.

People earn the honor of marriage by the degree of commitment they bring to the relationship. That commitment has not the first thing to do with the gender of the participants.

My marriage has been an endless source of joy to me, a fact that gays joining the institution will have precisely no effect on, any more than J-Lo's or Elizabeth Taylors serial matrimonies (can't those women just have a good friend?).

Since no one, including you, has been able to point out how adding to the married population will somehow dilute individual marriages, I find the notion that some will be denied the same fulfillment I enjoy simply because God or nature--your choice--failed to wire them for heterosexuality utterly incomprehensible.

Jeff:

Your problem lies in thinking that your inability to comprehend something matters.

Jeff;

"People earn the honor of marriage by the degree of commitment they bring to the relationship."

No, for their commitment to their commitments and the institution. As a sage once said, love is not what fuels marriage, it is the prize for getting everything right.

Jeff, why will they be denied that fulfillment? Why is a relationship fulfilling only when it is recognized by the state? Noone is being the fulfillment of entering into committed relationships by the state's withholding of recognition.

The honor accorded to marriage is not to encourage people to enter into fulfilling relationships, but to encourage people to enter and to stay committed to a relationship that may be personally unfulfilling, but is vitally needed by the society. Fulfilling activities do not require encouragement, they are self-encouraging. Again, it is primarily about child bearing and child rearing, not about adult pairing. The committed adult relationship is the means, not the end, of the marriage relationship.

I don't think that the analogy is strained. Even with modern mortality rates, it still requires an average birth rate >2 to maintain the population. For every woman. The more that some women opt out of procreation, the more children that the other women will have to bear to maintain society.

We are benefitting from immigration in our country to maintain our population and our demographic balance, but that will not last forever, as world population will peak sometime after 2050. At some point before the end of the century, society will once again call for men and women to answer the call to produce life and perpetuate the race. Our generation is enjoying a historically unheard of reprieve from such duty, our current lifestyle options are merely a luxury that cannot and will not be available to future generations.

OJ:

Your problem is reading into my words things that clearly aren't there. My lack of comprehension was. Any indication that my comprehension matters just as clearly was not.

Peter:

I stand by what I say. People earn the honor of marriage by how committed they are to the relationship.

Robert:

Marriage stands as a legally sanctioned commitment. You may as well ask why bother getting married at all. Surely you can distinguish the difference between being married and shacking up.

Also, as I mentioned to Peter, I clearly stated people earn the honor of marriage by the commitment they bring to bear on the relationship. I don't recall having used the words "love" or "fulfilling" anywhere.

The secular, as opposed to religious, institution of marriage is most certainly not about child bearing or rearing. It may have been at one time, but it isn't any longer. Children may well be an intended consequence, but desire or ability are not qualifying criteria.

I have been in the military. I have been in combat. I am married. Based on those experiences, I find your analogy broken because one is completely unlike the other.

"The more that some women opt out of procreation, the more children that the other women will have to bear to maintain society." Yes, and?

God, or nature, gave women brains. Man provided virtually fool proof birth control and modern economies where children are most decidedly not a scource of wealth. It may well be that we are standing at the beginning of a slide to extinction.

Two things: What on earth does that have to do with gays marrying? If we stop them, will women suddenly experience a wave of fecundity?

Second, so what? Absent Talibanesque coercion, it will either happen, or not.

Allowing gays to marry, and thereby gain the refuge that separates legally recognized commitment (and the not inconsiderable consequent material benefits) from shacking up won't affect your marriage, or mine, or Peter's. Subscriptions to Brides magazine won't tank. J-Lo won't get divorced because of it. Women will, or won't, have as many children as they want.

In other words, prohibiting gays from getting married is a significant detrimant to those who desire to do so, while benefiting heterosexuals not at all.

That's a heck of a way to treat people who, through God's or Nature's whim, can't, without bearing false witness, choose to be heterosexual.

I've heard it is God's word that bearing false witness is a sin. Unfortunately, God has been completely silent on homosexuality. Of course, we could go on the word of man.

But from what I've read here, most think that isn't a good enough reason.

Honor the institution, not your feelings.

Honor morality, not your feelings.

Jeff:

Exactly. Morality is set by others (actually, the Other). Feelings are personal.

Your feelings aren't, because you would like to make them writ for everyone. And you seem awfully certain about what the Other has in mind.

Especially since he made those others you so like to revile.

Pish posh. I feel the same as you--I hate having limits placed on me. Who wouldn't rather unplug someone who becomes a burden? Or get jiggy with the nearest hottie of whatever sex or age? Our feelings are entirely animal.

Pish-posh yourself. You don't feel the same as I, since you don't seem to share my distaste of mindless bigotry.

No, I share your mindless bigotry.

Wrong again.