“You introduced this issue of gay marriage to this threat and you will find in your initial post that you attacked Conservatives, called us thieves, and presented a poorly expressed and poorly thought out notion of our hijacking the institution of marriage from the Left.”
What else do you call it when it is assumed that valuing family is a conservative principle, as in this article? The fact that he is a family man is supposedly the “conservative core” of the film. I view “the institution of family” as politically neutral. Most people have one, and conservatives and liberals are equally capable of living a family-oriented life. What I meant by “stealing” the family institution was that, in the cultural mainstream, it is now assumed that “family” is a political value. The fact that Daniel Day Lewis in this film is a family man somehow makes him “conservative”. I disagreed with that.
I was sloppy with my words in the initial post – when I said “stealing it from liberals” I did not mean that liberals were the sole possessors of family, but that liberals have been defined as being “anti-family values”. That is what I meant.
“The spirit of your post is what called up the various arguments against your views and I think you should consider your role in initiating the form the dialog has taken. I would argue that many other of your ideas were expressed with similar shortness of thought and depth of understanding as the point you tried to make regarding my intelligence. You assumption that we are all sheep is just one more instance of irrational prejudice.”
These points only address the harsh and abrasive tone of my argument. My hositility to conservatives does not occur in a vacuum – it occurs against a backdrop of one of the worst conservative presidencies this nation has ever seen. As Catalonia said, politics is rough.
“As Conservatives we are prone to maintaining tradition. We respect the wisdom of our elders. We realize that the institutions they created were based on lessons learned in their time. We find that many of those lessons still apply today and radical changes to said institutions should have an extremely important, even critical reason for changing them. We are talking cost-benefit.”
I disagree. For one, tradition itself is not a reason to maintain a practice. Slavery was once tradition. Traditions must be evaluated on their own merits. This is a problem I have with conservatism in general – there is no merit that stems from tradition.
As far as cost-benefit, please provide me with some explanation of what it would cost to change the institution.
“It is our argument that gay marriage nullifies the meaning of marriage. Marriage is a universal tradition. Cannibal-primitives, Communist-Chinese, Hindu-Indians and ancient Egyptians all consider marriage to be a vow between the families of one man and one woman to consider each other responsible for certain aspects of the care of that couple and their children.”
Marriage is not in all of those cultures between one man and one woman and hasn’t always been so. It is not universal. There are plenty of polygamous tribes all over the world, not to mention Islamic polygamy. To claim marriage as a universal value is inaccurate. It already has a plastic definition. To allow for gay people of the same sex to get married is one small change to the definition of marriage that will ultimately have little to no impact on the lives of everyone else. The only impact it will have is positive – on the lives of gay people.
“That couple is also bound to care for each other, their children and for members of each other’s family. Each culture defines for itself what care is taken by whom and for who. Each culture defines for itself the degree of care given to various members of the family. These will reflect the values of each culture. But, every culture defines marriage as between man and woman, not just religious ones. Marriage is such a primary institution that it reaches to the core of cultural, civic and religious aspects of the human condition.”
Marriage does not entail those things for everyone. That is obvious. Plenty of married people choose never to have children. Plenty of cultures utilize communal rearing of children.
Also, when you say “each culture defines marriage as between a man and a woman”, you are incorrect. Plenty of European countries have allowed same-sex marriage without collapsing. Canada has, for instance.
“Divorce has been made very easy in the last 20 to 30 years. I remember when being divorcées was a stigma of sorts. Being the child of a divorced couple was a stigma as well. I argue there is good reason for this. A couple who has taken a vow such as marriage and then breaks this vow has shown itself to be irresponsible, selfish and lacking in principled commitment.”
I fully disagree with this attitude. A good reason for a couple to be stigmatized? A good reason for a child of that couple to be stigmatized? No. That’s absurd. People are more free to govern their lives how they like – why do you object to that?
If marriage needs that kind of stimatization to prop it up, maybe it isn’t such a great institution in the first place. The way I see it, though, divorce being stigmatized simply meant that there were a lot more unhappy married couples, men having affairs, women being able to leave abusive husbands. You know, it used to be that only men could divorce women. I welcome the fact that partners in a marriage have the power to leave that marriage without being ashamed of themselves.
“The example of the parents will not be long in being emulated by the children.”
Because the children will also have the freedom to leave a marriage once the love that the marriage is built on has died.
“A divorced family is far less likely to provide personal care for the children. The father will often be busy working to pay of alimony. He will often have a new family he needs to care for. This new family will inevitably be more important to him as they are living in his home and seeing him everyday. Keeping peace in his home will come before the care taking of his children from a previous marriage. Take the position of the wife in the initial marriage. She will probably have to work. She will be leaving her children to her parents or siblings, maybe an aunt, all of whom, if they too are divorced, will have various other children and step-children to help care for, all of whom are living in various parts of the country, none of whom have an easy time coming together as a family should. So, what was once a family that took care of each other is now a splintered crystal that needs help in caring and raising the next generation. Lacking a clear and consistent source of support the children will be sent to daycare and then school. This is expensive for a single parent.”
I get it, divorce is an unpleasant thing. But I argue that people should have the freedom to govern their own lives. It is almost as rough to live in a divorced family as it is to live with a mother and father who hate each other. Consider that.
“Who should take on this task? The government, of course. This will then cost us more in taxes.”
The other option is to just lead them high and dry – certainly that is a worse consequence than “high taxes”. My position is that, since so few people at the top in our society have so much of the wealth (the top 10% of society has 90% of the wealth), they ought to pay most or all of the taxes. They will still be left with so much more than they need, and so much more than everyone else. But that’s a different issue. I’m just pointing that out to show you my solution to that problem.
Another answer to the “taxes are too high” problem are that we need to not go wasting trillions of dollars in places like Iraq. Again, that’s a different issue, but it would make no sense to complain that taxes are too high, and then support a war that is like flushing our money down the toilet.
I’m not even going to talk about the distracting school issue (really, the school issue has no relevance whatsoever to gay marriage), except to say that infants do know how to suckle. It is called the rooting reflex.
“How does this apply to gay marriage? I will start by saying that gays can and should have the right to commit themselves to a life together. If this commitment is desired then the state should recognize this commitment with a civil union which confers the rights married couples have. The traditional right of inheritance (next of kin) should be maintained unless stipulated in a contract, in which the couple designate each other as the sole heirs and beneficiaries of each other’s estate. If the couple wishes to adopt, one more form they will have to fill out will be some sort of marriage license which establishes all the rights of care and inheritance on the partner and children upon the taking of custody for the child. If the parents give up their rights to the child then the child will continue to receive compensation from the couple and will have inalienable inheritance rights. This aught to keep vanity adoptions down to a minimum. The key point here is that the child requires parents who are both committed to the family and will commit fully to raising a decent human-being.”
Then we are in relative agreement. As long as gays get all the rights and freedoms that straight people have in unions, I’m fine with it. I want to clarify, though, that adoption standards for gay people should be no more stringent than those for straight people. I don’t think you were saying that. The adoption process should always be closely monitored.
“Family is about reproduction. Gay sexual relationships are not.”
Your first claim cannot be supported. A married couple that does not plan to have children is still a family.
Your second claim makes perfect sense, of course, gay people cannot reproduce by having sex. However, they can have children by using a sperm donor in the case of lesbians or using a surrogate mother in the case of gay men.
“It is contra the purpose of marriage to confer that status to couples who cannot naturally create new members of the family. I think a fair compromise to individual freedom is civil union and special marriage status to homosexual couple who are adopting.”
Ah, so you are saying they should only call it marriage once the gay couple adopts? I find that confusing. To me, it honestly doesn’t matter if it is called “marriage” or a “civil union” as long as they have the same rights. I think civil unions ought to confer the right to adopt, just as marriage does for straight people, provided they pass adoption screening programs.
“Somtimes the majority understands the point better then you do. It could very well be that you can’t change my mind because my ideas are more sound then yours. You are free to engage anyone in your conversation but at some point you might want to learn to concede to wisdom.”
I don’t think that’s the case at all. The fact that the majority holds a view does not prove it wise, nor does it prove them right. What they understand better than I do is that they have an objection to calling it “marriage.” To me, that makes no difference. Call it a civil union if you are uncomfortable calling it a marriage, but give the gay people all the same rights.
I trust in my own mind and not traditions. Just because something is old does not mean it’s good.
“You did keep beating on the Christian bongo.”
I did, and gradually I dropped that when I realized I was not talking to two Christians. However, in America, the group most strongly opposed to gay marriage is the Religious Right – for the most part, the Christian Right. I made the assumption that my opponents were Christian – unfairly, I admit.
“How were we to know you meant any set of beliefs which you disagree with? Your posts are filled with poorly articulated ideas. How are we too know if its the idea or the articulation which you’ve poorly drafted?”
Please, give me some examples. As of now, you are the one pointing something out to me that I was unaware of. If I look over my own writings, I’m not going to see where you misunderstood me and why.
“Nazis were anti-Semitic. They hated Jews and I have no real problem with that. We should be free to hate whom we wish. Sometimes hate is justified. Calling an anti-Semite a Nazi is foolish as what differentiates a Nazi from a typical anti-Semite is what they were allowed to do with their hatred.”
So, what you are saying is that it was okay for anti-Semites to hate Jews, just so long as they never acted out that hatred? I see what you mean, kind of.
While I agree that people have the right to hate whoever they want, I still have a problem with the fact that the Nazis hated the Jews, the fact that some religious and non-religious folks alike hate gays, etc. In these cases, hate is not justified. The hate is a character failing, and while they are free to hate whoever they want, that doesn’t make it morally right to hate that person/group of people.
There are people who hate gays – and they don’t act on it. There are people who hate gays and want to deny them both civil unions and marriage. There are people who hate gays and attack them physically. And there are people that don’t hate gays, and yet they support the political power of people that do.
You don’t hate gays, but you are a conservative. Fine. You also oppose gay marriage. Fine. But are you voting for Republican candidates? Because almost all of the Republican party wants to ban both gay marriage and gay civil unions. If you vote for them, you are supporting bigoted actions.
Such a case is like voting for a racist candidate (just as an example, not to be inflammatory), and then saying you’ll vote against all the racist legislation they propose. Some of that legislation is going to pass anyway, and if you helped the person who proposed it get power, then in a way, you are indirectly responsible for the passing of the legislation, even if you opposed it and voted against it. In this case, there is a high risk a large enough majority in the country supports a ban on both gay marriage and civil unions. So voting for a candidate who would support those things is just like voting for it yourself – the practical consequences will be the same.
Anyway, I think we are mostly in agreement on the subject of gay marriage/civil unions. I have no problem with civil unions that confer all the rights of marriage being available for same-sex couples.
