This is something I don’t get about the anti-gay-marriage crowd.
I can literally divorce my wife over a span of scant months (not that I would, Mel is fucking awesome), then hop on a jet and get married in a ceremony hosted by Elvis.
Then, when I sober up and realized what a ridiculous shitbag I’ve been, I can have that marriage annulled.
Where’s the sanctity? I ain’t seeing it.
Sanctity is as sanctity does. 🙂
If you look at states ranked by divorce rate, you notice that red states dominated by religious conservatives tend to rank near the top, while secular blue-state dens of iniquity dominated by godless lib’ruls tend to rank near the bottom. Who’s cheapening marriage, again?
That’s because poor people can’t afford to get divorced….
/sarcasm
“I’ll take random rants for 400, Alex.”
Seriously, what stirred this up?
Um, evidently you didn’t read Jay’s comment about the supposed “sanctity of marriage”.
Um, I did. I didn’t see anything about Red or Blue. Did you?
I’d be willing to bet that the incidence of marriage is also lower in blue states than in red.
Statistics is so fun. 🙂
That’s because people in blue states only get married when they’re certain it’s the right thing to do, rather than for the hell of it or because everyone expects them to. They also marry later, when their personalities are a bit more solidified than they would be straight out of college or high school. I live in Massachusetts and of the people I know who are married, most of them married fairly late in life, usually in their late 20s or early 30s.
It must be nice to know why everyone does what they do. 🙂
Has nothing to do with religion, other than the stigma of ‘you gotta get married’, getting married young leads to increased divorce rate. Cohabitating young leads to many moves, without a divorce. Same result, different statistic. Got shit to do with blue/red whatever, more useless propaganda.
I don’t think you’re right there, although you’re not completely wrong. I agree that it isn’t because of political affiliation, but I think that religion IS important here (and political affiliation just happens to correspond with religion in this case). From that standpoint (and IIRC), the “red” states have a larger percentage of members of conservative religions (eg Southern Baptism), with the “blue” states having a larger percentage of members of liberal religions (eg Unitarians and Congregationalists) or people who don’t practice religion at all (eg atheists and some agnostics). The former group is more likely to be concerned about “living in sin”, leading to earlier marriages (and thus more divorces) even among the less religiously observant; “that’s just not how it’s done” is culturally important even to, for example, a southern atheist. Basically, that stigma that you waved off is the important part, and it derives heavily from religion.
I also disagree with “same result, different statistic”. jlgrant’s point was that marriage is already lacking in sanctity. We see evidence of this point in the fact that, as you noted, marriage has often become basically the same as shacking up but with added red tape. In other words, it’s the statistic itself that’s important here—not what behavior the statistic represents. Until marriage isn’t widely viewed merely as “something to do on a whim in Vegas” or “the prerequisite before I can bone my girlfriend” and ending it isn’t just “teehee lol lemme annul that real quick”, any appeal to “sanctity” is ludicrous.
Heck, we United Statsians aren’t monogamous of late. We’re serial polygamists…
I read that as “United Satanists”, and was very confused.
It’s all about the sanctity of that third marriage
Actually, it’s not nearly that easy to get married in Vegas. My ex and I had looked at doing that when we got married in 2007. It turns out they’ve added a bunch of hoops and hurdles now to fix that whole stereotypical “drunk Vegas wedding” stuff from happening.
Oddly enough, it is exactly that easy in Maine though. If you want to get married there, you can manage it in about an hour from making that decision.
So – Didn’t see anything about Red v. Blue, but that came boiling to the top in a hurry. Why?
Also: Julio Iglesias officiating would be awesome.
I’ve always found it interesting that folks are demanding the government recognise gay marriage. It’s not the government’s damn BUSINESS who takes part in a religious ritual, and if you’re celebrating that the government is ALLOWING you to get married, you’re admitting it had the right to PREVENT your marriage in the first place.
Except the government DOES recognize marriage for a variety of reasons. Not all involve money, either. Power of Attorney, medical and otherwise, for example. I have that for my wife automatically, if she is in the hospital and unable to consent to procedures, I can do so for her. Sure, you can create a legal document, but here’s the thing- all it takes is an officious twit deciding he disapproves of your relationship, and he refuses to honor it until it is vetted by staff legal. Next week.
It isn’t about the government allowing it. It is recognition, for a huge variety of reasons.
1) Civil marriage to the consenting adult of your choice is not a religious matter. It only becomes a religious matter if you want your union blessed by a holy person in a church/temple/assorted other holy place. Saying “I Does” in front of a Rent-an-Elvis is not religious.
2) The only ones “celebrating” the idea of government restricting who can and cannot marry are the ones who don’t want fags exchanging vows and rings because it’s”icky.” Ironically, they also tend to be the ones who howl the loudest about big government needing to butt out of people’s lives.
3) The government has been in the business of deciding who can marry whom for decades. There are all sorts of lovely little fees and taxes they collect for granting you and your beloved a marriage license, and thus access to the over 1100 special rights and privileges granted to holders of said license. You really think they’re going to just give up that steady little revenue stream? Especially with a nearly 50% divorce rate?
1) Civil marriage to the consenting adult of your choice is not a religious matter. It only becomes a religious matter if you want your union blessed by a holy person in a church/temple/assorted other holy place. Saying “I Does” in front of a Rent-an-Elvis is not religious.
Are you saying that the bridge of the Enterprise-D isn’t a holy place? Damn. I’d better get down the synagogue.
Marriage belongs to the state. Proof? Try to get married without a priest. Can do. Try to get married without a license? Not so easy – not easy at all. Government owns marriage: Q.E.D.
I do wish people who are anti-marriage, or anti-religious, would get that straight in their heads; any argument which places ownership of the institution in the wrong hands is automatically invalid.
As for peoples’ religious rights, I find it odd that pretty much the same people that say religious freedom means Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to follow the law, but that religions that recognize same-sex unions cannot (including making it illegal to do so in at least one state).
Sanctity occurs somewhere before alimony, but after child support.
Note that a lot of the divorce rate is driven by frequent fliers, like Omar and Newt.
Newt’s a piker. I have five fathers. Well, one father and four step-fathers.
BTW: Mom’s a Democra -. Not that it matters; People screw up relationships based on who they are, not on who they vote for.
Two Lumps link down at 7:24 CDT, 5/28.
I have yet to be given a rational reason why gays cannot marry – if I challenge someone to give me a reason against it that does NOT involve their religious beliefs, they can’t do it.
Personally, I do not see any reason why they CAN’T marry each other. It sure as hell doesn’t affect MY marriage. My first marriage sucked before gay marriage was legal in MA and it still sucked after – no change. My current marriage is wonderful… and I now live in VT, where they make it an industry to cater to the gay/lesbian clientele who want to get married. Still doesn’t affect my marriage… except that I’m now so happy that I want to see everyone who wants to be this happy have the opportunity to do so.
The only “reason” is based on religion… and thus null and void under the First Amendment.
IMNSHO
Not quite, in as much as people vote, and people tend to vote their values, and values are often driven by religious outlook. OTOH, I see no reason that votes driven by religious agendae should be upheld unless there’s a viable and bone fide public policy reason in support.
Not making a claim about anything, but the non-religious argument goes something like:
Government’s only real interest in promoting marriage is to promote stable family units that are proven to help* society
Marriages of two people who can procreate and making divorce difficult** increases the number of stable family units
Therefore the government-granted advantages to marriage should be limited to couples who can procreate
Yes, this argument has holes. i could probably fill some if I cared. You did say no one has ever given you a non-religious argument
* Mainly by reducing crime by the offspring – No I’m not providing references. I said I’m not endorsing this argument, just regurgitating it.
** Yeah, yeah. Lost battle there.
“Government’s only real interest in promoting marriage is to promote stable family units that are proven to help* society”.
Somehow I missed that when I read the constitution. Or does that come under “insure domestic Tranquility”? 😉 Doesn’t seem to be working, though, does it?
SAC has it more or less right.
I’m an advocate for the Catholic Church’s teaching on sex, marriage, and family. The foundational precept of it is that sex makes babies, and so we should arrange our sexual relationships for the greatest benefit of the kids that may result.
Up until hedonism became America’s religion (I use the date of the SCOTUS’ decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, though the beginnings obviously came earlier), that was how it was. Society only approved of sex between those who were going to rear their children together. Men normally married, became fathers, and helped to rear their children. They had no other legitimate opportunities for sex. Women stuck with the men they married, because divorce laws gave them few other options. They did not offer sex to men who would not serve as fathers to their own children. They did not consider aborting their own children in the womb.
So the vast majority of kids were reared by their biological parents, from birth to adulthood. That was and remains the best situation for the children. They will usually have higher academic achievement, higher incomes (ie, be more productive), lower rates of criminality and lower rates of recidivism. These days, such children and families are regarded as the exception, not the norm, and all of society suffers as a result. It will take a MASSIVE religious revival to reverse this trend.
This is because most governments really do wind up ruling more-or-less with the consent of the governed, which means that they try to do what the people want. And since America is now more a land of hedonism than one of personal responsibility, hedonism is rewarded by government and personal responsibility is left to wither on the vine. This gets politicians re-elected, which, aside from the exercise of power, is about the only reward our society offers to a man in office. That’s why marriage isn’t working, and why government alone cannot fix it. The revival has to come first. Changes in law will follow.
If gays want to be as miserable as married straights….
I had a lesbian friend who was actually dreading the advent of offical gay marriage – and all the attendant social duty and baggage that comes with it. She died before it came to pass, but I daresay she’d be laughing her ass off about now.
And the only ones who REALLY win are the lawyers.
Think about whats going to happen in common law and community property states, instant retroactive property ownership, and all the complications that will ensue.
Like you I have a close relative who doesn’t see that its all sunshine and unicorns, a rational thinker.
The fact that some don’t like or want it (and there are plenty of straights in there too) does not justify withholding it from others.
No argument with that; just commenting on some of the observed irony.
So do gay weddings in Las Vegas have to be officiated by Liberace impersonators?
They’d certainly be dressed for the occasion! 😀
If you really want to defend the sanctity of marriage, get rid of the no-fault divorce.
Tho “Sanctitiy of marriage” is just code phrase for “We only want a man/woman marriages cause we are homophobes”
I’ve seen plenty of sanctity of marriage people complain about no-fault divorce and un-serious or serial marriage, too.
So they’re being consistent, at least that subset.
Gay marriage is still a binary contract. Even straight people can only marry one person at a time. I’m waiting for Poly marriages to become legal.
Does anyone else make it a point to read the chalk board in the background?
Always.
Yeeessssss! 2 Gryph.
Part of me wants to end the whole gay marriage/straight marriage discussion by saying “Fuck this, NO MARRIAGE FOR ANYONE!!!! You can’t work things out amongst youraselves, you don’t deserve it.” But I’m not in any position to get this done politically, and I’d hate to think of the unintended consequences if marriage were abolished.
I would sign on to that. The state has no business conferring preferential status and legal and economic benefits on certain citizens while withholding them from others based solely on their relationship choices.
Ok then. Now we deal with inheritance. Powers of Attorney. Survivor benefits from government and private pensions and plans. A whole host of issues that are dealt with automatically by government recognition of marriage. Kind of the way they help recognize and enforce other contracts.
And that’s it. A civil contract between consenting adults. Then the lawyers would be happy, legal issues would be taken care of, and the religious aspect can be kept for those who chose it.
Julio Iglesias definitely doesn’t rock, but you *must* recognize the voice (Think Tom Jones, with less bass and testosterone … {kidding!!!})
My wife and I spent several thousand dollars flying round-trip from Anchorage to Seattle so we could stand witness to our two dearest friends’ wedding, and a few days sightseeing, because right-wing dipshits amended the Alaska State Constitution a few years back to reflect their religious beliefs. They took one of the “purest” state constitutions and changed it to specifically exclude the rights of a minority. And, they wonder why people dislike their agenda?????
I’d have much rather stood witness in our home state, then spent the money to go to Hawai’i, or Baja California, or Bermuda …
I think the main problem is – the folks who are most offended by gay marriage are simply afraid the gays will be better at it than straight folks are. Sure can’t do it any worse!
Hardly likely. :p
More to teh point, they just don’t what to see homosexuals as essentially the same as they are – means that they have to examine their own outlook and perceptions; that’s damned scary stuff for a lotta folks; It’s much easier to just pretend that ‘other’ folks are different. Even if you have to make artificial distinctions.
@MaskMan: Not hardly. There are essentially no fundamental differences between people who are same-sex attracted, and those who are not. However, there are real and significant differences between homosexual acts, and those which may lead to children.
JL, you are absolutely right that our society does not have sufficient respect for the institutions of marriage and family. As I said before, grievous societal assaults on marriage started with the legalization of contraception (made federal by Griswold v. Connecticut), escalated with adoption of easy, no-fault divorce laws, and was further ratcheted up with legalization of at-will abortion (federalized in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton). You aren’t going to see a society which recognizes the sanctity of marriage while it simultaneously holds to these things which attack and undermine it.
Gay marriage is pretty much the cherry on top of our societal assaults on marriage, or the mop-up battle, if you will. There’s definitely an element of the homosexual activist movement which wants to destroy marriage, and for that matter, there has been for some time. The family, and the protections it provides for its members from the state, are well and truly crippled. I for one would be very sorry to see it go. Thinkers from as far back as Aristotle and Plato have regarded family, not the individual, as the basic building block of society.
The Catholic Church is not the arbiter of what does and doesn’t constitute marriage, nor is it the arbiter of what does and doesn’t constitute moral behavior. Your arguments are all old, tired, and thoroughly discredited. Let’s run through them, shall we?
“However, there are real and significant differences between homosexual acts, and those which may lead to children.”
Let us assume, for the moment, that marriage exists solely for procreation. What about heterosexual marriage with one or both partners being sterile? Is that then disallowed? Should it be required that both partners prove their fertility before marriage is permitted? Perhaps marriage should end after menopause, as well.
“…grievous societal assaults on marriage started with the legalization of contraception…”
It’s, therefore, bad for people to decide that their life situation doesn’t allow children at that time, but to still choose physical intimacy? Should people be disallowed from having intercourse during less-fertile times of the month, let we lose respect for its sole purpose, procreation? (Also, see the sterility argument above.)
“…escalated with adoption of easy, no-fault divorce laws…”
Having been party to a very simple 6-years-later “annulment” through the Catholic Church, I utterly reject the suggestion that this is solely a legal problem. (“Annulment,” not “divorce,” yes, but if it looks like a duck…) On top of that, you’re suggesting that it would be better for children to be raised by feuding parents rather than loving ones, just because two people got married too young or too soon and shouldn’t have been together in the first place. This hardly seems to fit with a desire to support happy, healthy, functional families.
“…and was further ratcheted up with legalization of at-will abortion…”
Same problem as both above. You’re suggesting that it’s better for children to be born into an unhealthy situation (unhappy marriage, single parent, etc) than to not be born at all. (We’ve both argued the ethics of abortion here before, so there’s no need to touch on them now.)
“You aren’t going to see a society which recognizes the sanctity of marriage while it simultaneously holds to these things which attack and undermine it.”
None of these things attack and undermine marriage. As should be clear by now, marriage is not conceived of as solely for procreation, even by groups who claim otherwise; else they would favor banning marriage in other cases as well.
“There’s definitely an element of the homosexual activist movement which wants to destroy marriage, and for that matter, there has been for some time.”
This is not unique to homosexual activists; there are also a number of heterosexuals who feel the same way. In fact, I believe some of them commented earlier on this page. This may be related to the fact that marriage in the US, as it stands, is a strange hybrid of religious and secular. The secular part is merely a contract (as explained above by Owen Hutchins among others), and the religious part has no legal right to affect it (per the First Amendment), and yet it does in fact. Eliminating marriage entirely, and replacing all of the associated rights with a different mechanism free of the religious baggage, would be one solution. (It’s not a solution I support personally, but it could be a workable one.) In any case, portraying this as a solely homosexual movement is either misinformed or disingenuous.
“Thinkers from as far back as Aristotle and Plato have regarded family, not the individual, as the basic building block of society.”
Actually, Aristotle regarded the city-state as the basic building block of society. However, I find it more interesting that you mention Plato; Plato and Socrates both praised pederastic love over familial love. (The concept of “platonic love” is also well-known, and clearly has nothing to do with starting a family.) A bit of advice: in general, you’d probably be best staying away from Ancient Greeks when looking for anti-heterosexual support; it’s much like looking for anti-gun quotes from the NRA or anti-evolution quotes from Darwin. I’d like to end this paragraph with a quote from Plato’s Symposium” (Jowett’s translation): “And, therefore, the ill-repute into which these [homosexual] attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition of those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed.”
When all is said and done, all you’ve demonstrated is that you, yourself, make the artificial distinctions of which MaskMan wrote.
Jeez, I already dealt with most of this.
First, these are desired norms. Hard cases make bad law (and norms). You can make reasonable exceptions, but they should remain exceptions, not become the norms. Gun grabbing is based on treating normal people like the bizarre exception. Normal people use guns harmlessly (hunting, target shooting, sport) or beneficially (defense). People who use guns harmfully are criminals, and they are definitely the minority of gun owners and users. And neither the government nor the rest of society has any business treating us like criminals, because criminals are the exception, not the norm.
The norm is that sex is between the type of people who are ready and willing to have and rear kids with each other (“open to life”). That way, the kids get reared by their biological parents. This, that kids get raised in a stable family founded on a lifetime bond between their biological parents, is the desired norm. Social structures should protect and fortify this norm, not marginalize it. That’s what the sexual behavior norm does. The more you allow and normalize exceptions, the more single-parent households you get, which are bad for kids when compared to households founded on the permanent marriage of their biological parents.
Understanding and working with your reproductive system in natural ways for prudential reasons is fine. It’s called natural family planning, and like the rest of nature, it’s either good or morally neutral (ie, not inherently bad, though susceptible to misuse). Deliberately fucking up the reproductive system in order to make someone’s body (yours or another’s) a tool for your pleasure is inherently dehumanizing, making it bad for you and for society. Furthermore, aside from gonadectomy and hysterectomy, every single type of contraception has a failure rate. Risk homeostasis being what it is, increased use of contraception nearly always leads to an increase in illegitimacy, which is bad for the kids.
No-fault divorce is NOT solely a legal problem. It’s a governmental response to a social problem, to wit, that the manufacturers of culture celebrate and support extramarital sex, and ignore the problems it causes, unless they kill the victims.
The choice (and results) provided by no-fault divorce are not merely the binary “feuding parents or loving parents.” There’s also single moms, single moms with a string of boyfriends, single moms with one or a series of live in boyfriends, single moms with live in boyfriends who sexually and/or otherwise abuse the single mom’s kids, and a host of other bad outcomes, all of which are far worse for the kids than feuding parents who are nasty to each other. And divorce wounds kids, even when the marriage goes bad. My brother’s marriage involved mutual emotional and physical abuse, and eventually his wife filed for divorce. It upsets their kids terribly that they don’t know how their life is going to go. Their academic and social development have suffered as a result.
As for abortion, yeah, I am definitely suggesting it’s better for kids to be born than killed, because no matter how bad life gets, it is still good, and mercy killing is evil. At the very least, they should have the choice, which abortion definitely denies them. I recently suffered through acute necrotizing cholecystitis. It was easily the most severe pain I have ever been through, far worse than kidney stones, or wisdom tooth extraction without anesthetic. I would rather live through that pain for decades than die. There is no life in which you neither suffer nor serve others. And it’s not up to you to decide for others whether their suffering or service is acceptable for them.
It’s impossible to regard abortion as a moral choice unless you deny the humanity of what you kill, as JL did in previous debates. This means you give some people the power to divide others into groups which have their right to life protected by law, and dehumanized groups whose members can be killed with the government’s approval. Because allowing anyone to make such distinctions is clearly evil, I fully expect you to claim that you aren’t doing that because unborn children are not people, and bloviate a lot in defense of that statement.
I do not approve of dismantling marriage, and I would like to reverse the efforts already made in that direction. Its benefits cannot easily be replaced, if at all, but that does not matter to the activists who want to do so. They ignore the lesson of Chesterton’s fence at our peril.