Because a lot of people oppose polygamy. Again, I don't think same-sex unions actually will lead to polygamy, I just agree there's no reason polygamy shouldn't be allowed. Claiming that SSU will inevitably lead to polygamy is therefore scaremongering.

Overstating what? Like I said, maybe you're utterly clueless about the way many opponents of gay marriage operate. Maybe you had no intention, having moved from gay marriage to polygamy, of moving from there to incest and paedophilia. I've seen it too many times to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not sure what to say to this. Why are you treating "polygamy" as a worst-case scenario? I don't think "inevitability" is a part of the discussion here. If anything, I think you're scaremongering in order to drive out discussion.

I'm not clueless about how "they" operate. Nor am I clueless about how "those who oppose they" operate.

By the way, these are the types things that make this type of conversation even more frustrating and difficult than it already is.

You agree with the underlying logic of fairness, and that it *should* be applied to polygamy. But when I talk about polygamy, I'm scaremongering. It's like you want to sweep the logical consequences (which you agree are there!) under the rug because it makes for bad politics.

Edit: It would be very different if you were saying "No, the reasoning is flawed" or "That's not my position." I'm accurately reflecting the position you've taken and its consequences.

Aaaron, where exactly do you stand? If you don't mind saying (or if you have already stated it clearly, point me to the post).

I really don't know how to make it any clearer.

Many people oppose polygamy. Because of this, tying gay marriage to polygamy is seen as an effective means of creating and/or re-inforcing opposition to gay marriage. I am treating it as a worst-case scenario in the sole sense and to the sole extent that I believe many people do regard it as a worst-case scenario. I see it as overstating the case because I don't foresee the issue actually coming to a head.

Why are you slapping quotes around 'they'?

And for a guy who's not clueless about how operate, you sure act like one when you're accused of employing their tactics.

lol the fact that you're now arguing about polygamy means he's already won, All-In.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=327

ty

In other words, it's all a game of politics to you.

Edit: Fundamentally, I reject the idea that we cannot talk openly about the implications of certain beliefs simply on the basis of it being bad politics.

Because this scaremongering conversation is framed in an "us vs. them" mentality. The game in play is not one of following paths of reasoning, but who can more effectively marginalize the other opinion's viewpoint.

However, I think that if you follow this conversation, I'm clearly NOT approaching the conversation from that point of view.

Edit: Does this not sound like an echo of the whole bigotry conversation?

I do that only to point out that this is the conversation that you're creating. Basically, the accusation of scaremongering is a "no u" type of conversation. Once you see it for what it is, you can get off of it and get back to the actual conversation at hand.

Any secular reason why gay marriage shouldn't be called gay marriage, Aaron?

It depends on what you mean by "marriage." And it keeps coming to that central point.

If one adopts a historical view of marriage, it seems essential that the "marriage" relationship encompasses both genders. I think this is a reasonable understanding of the term. (I've stated this above in a response to Original Position, I believe.)

Edit: #498

"Gay marriage" would not really be using "gay" as an adjective ("gay" marriages are a subset of "marriages"), but you would have to adopt the phrase "gay marriage" like a new noun.

We have been and are talking openly about them. My original comment about scaremongering referred to how unlikely I consider it to be that polygamy will result in a strong objection to gay marriage. But it's lovely how you try to ascribe to me the position that we can't talk openly about such implications.

Oh, really?
And hey, in the very post I'm replying to:
You are significantly more guilty than I of any attempts to 'marginalize opinions'.

Aaron, I have been following the conversation, and you clearly are fully prepared to do exactly that and have done so several times, as shown above.

That is indeed what you're beginning to sound like, yes.

Good. Grief.

Many of those quotes preceded this:

I have also asked you to clarify your understanding of the term:

What was your response to my question?

...

Maybe it's a level over your head.

I couldn't tell you what position most SSM advocates take, but I wouldn't take the arguments of people on 2p2 as representative. I suspect that if you talk to people who care about policy and who support SSM, they'll state similar views to my own.

Well, as I've said, I think the problem here is that you and BTirish are treating marriage as if it were a concept--timeless and unchangeable and with necessary and sufficient conditions--rather than a constantly evolving social practice. So while it is true that at some points in history a same-sex couple couldn't get married, that is not because the traditional view of marriage required that marriage be this way. Rather, just as a matter of fact marriage at that time and place happened to be that way. I think polygamy is an even more obvious example of this.

I think most SSM advocates would acknowledge that SSM has not been allowed at various times in history. However, they don't think this implies that the nature of marriage is such that same-sex couples can't get married. So when you seem to essentialize the nature of marriage on the basis of some of its history, it just seems confusing. It would be like saying that before 1981 maleness was required by the concept of U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

When you challenge them to present an alternative concept of marriage, they might struggle to do so because they agree with me that marriage is a social institution and has no necessary and sufficient conditions. All you can do is describe what marriage is like at specific times and places, but at most there are just some vague generalities tying these social institutions together.

But now we're caught in this in-between state where two sides are saying "marriage should be like this" and there is literally no basis upon which to understand the conversation. There is no "should" because as a matter of fact "marriage" is *NOT* this way. It's in this in-between state where we're trying to decide what marriage is or is not, and should or should not be.

I don't think this is a fair analogy. I do not believe that there was a conception that ONLY men could be Supreme Court Justices. For example, if you think about today, there's no existing concept that women cannot be the president of the US, even though it hasn't happened yet.

In the analogy, if you go back to the 1950s or so and asked people "Can marriage be between two men?" you will get a pretty solid negative answer. This would be a huge distinction in how culture understands the concept.

The problem with this position as far as the discussion goes is that it seems to be essentially a denial of reality. History is fairly clear and explicit. We are able to talk about "marriage" (or institutions like marriage) in a generally consistent way going back quite far in history and across most cultures. There are details that shift in and out (arranged or not, limited to one wife or not), but there still does seem to be a generally consistent underlying picture. The change that is being suggested does not fit that pattern.

As I've said many times before, it seems to be a fundamentally new idea. This speaks nothing about good or bad, healthy or not, or whatever. But it seems to me that to say that it's still basically the same thing is false. Therefore, it makes sense that the word "marriage" NOT be used to describe it.

^ I was going to throw out polygamy as an example of changing marriage policy, but this discussion is too cut and dry for me to want to participate in. My views are subjective and I'm sure there's someone itt covering what my pov is anyway.

I think OriginalPosition is doing a fine job. And sorry to say, (IMO) Aaron comes off like he's stuck back in history and won't let go of the definition of marriage in fear that it'll be changed. Fwiw, I'm only skimming and cherry picking at parts of each post.

We don't need to go that much further back than the 1950s to get the answer to be "no way" to the question "can a woman or a black person be a Supreme Court Justice." I don't think your objection to the analogy on these grounds is good.

Their position in the thread does not negate their strident mischaracterisation of my clearly stated position.

You read it once (I assume), it won't kill you to go back and read it again.

Yeah, maybe blatant hypocrisy is a level over my head. Or maybe you routinely abuse the principle of charity while defecting from it yourself. No-one else on the forum has the curious habit of misunderstanding me with anything like the frequency with which you think I've said something I've very obviously not said, or fail to comprehend some basic sentence. And each time it happens it gets harder to accept that the issue is my prose.

There is nothing about
that necessitated the lengthy exchange you insisted upon. But that is just what you do - insist on ever lengthier exchanges on ever more trivial side-issues.

The historical concept of marriage hasn't been what we refer to as "marriage" for some time. Some things that marriage has been throughout history:

- About economics
- About reproduction
- Permanent (often on pain of death or banishment)
- Not restricted to two people (the majority of human cultures have been polygamous)
- Not related to personal choice (debatable, but between outright arranged marriages and highly predictable pairings based on material assets and social status, not far off the truth)
- Not related to romance (overwhelmingly true virtually everywhere until the Renaissance at the earliest, probably later)

In terms of gender, marriage has typically been between a man and a woman because gender roles in most cultures are both segregated and specific. Labor is divided along gender lines in most cultures, "gendered spaces" exist, specific rituals exist for each gender that are radically different, often there's a concept of a "third gender" for those who fail to adequately perform their gender rituals, etc. Marriage historically existed within the context of this highly-structured set of roles and was considered a part of all that.

The current conception of marriage (including what many uneducated Christians like to inaccurately describe as "traditional" marriage) bears essentially no relation to the historical/anthropological institutions. Nor does it bear any relation to how marriage worked for the Israelites, or during the time of the New Testament. The modern conservative American concept of marriage is a fantasy that was constructed within the last 200 years.

Regardless, policies like no-fault divorce changed the fundamental nature of marriage far more (and for a much greater proportion of marriages) than is possible for policies like same-sex marriage (or polygamy for that matter, a traditional and even Biblical institution disfavored now based largely on modern political sensibilities). The traditional foundation of marriage (whether we're talking about pilgrims, cave men, or anywhere in-between) has been undermined to the extent that it no longer exists (at least not in any state that would be recognizable to our traditional forebears). There's nothing to defend, except drive-through Vegas chapels staffed by Elvis (and the rights of the LGBT community).

Why should there be fear associated to this?

I'm not saying that there has never been changes. The analogy as presented is saying that the "essentialized" understanding of X is coincidental with the first manifestation of X.

There's another struggle in play, which is the well-definedness of the position of "Supreme Court Justice" with Original Positions ill-definedness of "marriage." (Edit: If I assert a well-definedness for marriage, it gets shot down because the contrary theory is that there is NO well-defined notion of marriage. That stands basically as a contrary assertion.)

I don't know if this causal relationship between gender roles and the dual-gendered nature of marriage can actually be asserted as the primary (or even one of the primary) reasons.

To me, this reads as an out-of-hand dismissal of the most obvious linkage between all the forms of marriage across time and cultures. It seems extremely disingenuous to do that.

All the other things you list (economics, reproduction, etc) are "somewhat" transient concepts as you go from one marriage to the next, in one culture to the next, in one time period to the next, but the same simply cannot be said of gender. (Edit: "Somewhat" because in a lot of ways those have been basically stable. In fact, those are partially the things that gay marriage proponents want to HOLD as essential characteristics of marriage.)

There shouldn't be. Replace it with a more suitable word if you choose. I'm not into wording dancing on forums. I think you know what I meant. You're clinging to the past.. holding onto the ways that suit your pov the best.

Hasty perhaps, out-of-hand seems extreme. But okay, more depth is needed. Not only have a number of cultures been documented in which same-sex marriage has independently arisen, anthropologists have identified a number of different familial configurations ("one man, one woman" being just one of many). The American Anthropological Association has this to say:

Maybe I'm naive to trust an organization like this, particularly when they step into politics (something I find distasteful for an ostensibly scientific-minded group), but it does seem like a common position among those who actually study cultural institutions and their similarities. For more specific examples, the middle chapter of this paper (PDF) makes an attempt to summarize same-sex marriage throughout known history, and there's no dearth of examples to cite in every broad geographic region in every era known to man.

Calling gender the "most obvious linkage between all forms of marriage" is reaching (and not only because "obvious" is subjective).

If I had to guess, I'd say economics has historically been the primary driver of marriage. I don't know of any form of marriage (any ritualized long-term pair bonding in humans) that doesn't depend (both explicitly and implicitly) on reproduction and economics, except modern Western marriage. I'd love to know in what sense they're transient - because occasionally couples fail to reproduce?

I would guess that historically, intent to reproduce is a more consistent feature of marriage than heterosexual configuration. Obviously it's hard to know for sure. Again I consider economics primary, and wholly universal up until the modern day, but that's even harder to measure.

Regardless, many of the features most universal to marriage throughout history and among various peoples do not apply to modern marriages in the Western world (and particularly in the US). If we lived in India, maybe the traditional marriage argument would have some force, but the form of marriage favored here (and yes, I mean the form favored by conservative "traditionalists") is both very new and very alien to what human beings have practiced for millennia. Certainly the variety of cultures that have practices standard marriage roles and rituals as well as same-sex marriage are more consistent with any basic concept of marriage (assuming there is such a thing) than we are. Unless you're suggesting that the fact that, in these cultures, a small minority of the population deviates from the "marriage script" on one point is somehow more relevant than the fact that, in our culture, much of the script has disappeared completely and the rest has been heavily revised.

I agree that there is no basis on which to understand the conversation about the timeless and essential nature of marriage (this is one of the reasons I don't think it has such a nature except perhaps in functional terms). That is why I think we should not bother with that conversation and instead focus on the harms/benefits or the increase/decrease in liberty that would result from the state recognizing the validity of SSM. Notice that it is the opponents of SSM that bring up concerns about the timeless and essential nature of marriage.

See, this is another example of why it is wrong to think about this dispute as a debate about the "concept" of marriage. In 1981 there was no problem thinking that a woman could be a Supreme Court Justice. In 1881, my guess is that this would have seemed inconceivable to many people.

What changed? Not the concept of a Supreme Court Justice, but rather our attitudes towards women. As a result we realized that our inability to conceive this before had more to do with our lack of imagination than with any logical implication of the idea of "1881 Supreme Court Justice."

Similarly, while it is correct that it was inconceivable to many people in 1950 that marriage could be between two members of the same sex, I would say this has more to do with their lack of imagination (more properly, their reasonable inability to foresee how society would evolve), than anything to do with the concept of "1950 marriage."

Talking about this in terms of "concepts" just seems like a misnomer to me. Concepts don't change, social institutions do, and marriage clearly has. What we are talking about is one more change, so why is this one different?

Two points. First, the fact that we are able to talk about history in a generally consistent way doesn't show that there is an essential nature to the idea of marriage. I tend to view 'marriage' as a family resemblance concept, so it is mainly our use that gives meaning to the word, not some more abstract idea.

Second, let's suppose we agreed that same-sex marriage was something never before seen. That doesn't in itself mean that if we include it we are inventing a new concept. It is only in fairly recent history that computer scientists have gotten married, but no one thinks that this constitutes a new concept of marriage. Instead, you would have to show that this new thing in some way conflicts with the concept of of marriage (and not just with people's attitudes towards marriage).

I don't see why not. We use the same word to refer to different concepts all the time.