Here’s a different take on the subject… different from what I’ve read elsewhere. Comments?

The decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court that marriage should be equally available to same-sex and mixed-sex couples seems to me to be unassailable, if only on grounds of equal protection.

Setting aside the conditions of religions, and treating only the interests of the state, the requirement for such a decision shows that the institution of marriage has drifted from its original purpose of supporting the continuation of humanity by supporting children and the families who raise them. Benefits that used to presume that children were being cared for are being extended to couples who never intended to have children.

Marriage should be restored to its noble purposes by having our legislatures and employers remove all benefits from new marriages for those married couples who do not care for children.

In today’s two-career marriages there is no reason for marriage to confer benefits in health care or inheritance. Instead, these benefits should be contingent on a married couple caring for children.

Once a couple begins to care for a child, these benefits would begin. If the child is cared for for several years, the benefits would become permanent for life. One example of such a benefit might be the right to pay federal taxes on combined income. In case of divorce, the benefits might be reduced but might also continue for life; a right which does not now exist, probably because of the rarity of divorce in centuries past.

The subject of same-sex marriage should be removed from the sphere of sexual politics and returned to the sphere of social policy in which which marriage arrangements are selected on the basis of which are most advantageous for the long term viability of society.

There’s no question that the thinning-out of marriage to just a mutually satisfying relationship between two persons, rather than as the central formative institution of human society including the raising of children, means that there seems to be less reason to oppose homosexual marriage. That’s why, in the long run, a complete rejection of modern sexual liberation is necessary. But in the short run, we still have to oppose the immediate threat of homosexual marriage.

I do not think that it is true that “civil rights” advocates believed white Americans were too prejudiced for them to proceed through democratic and constitutional avenues. The view taken by Myrdal, and at least PRETENDED to by civil rights advocates in the 1940s and 1950s, was that this was possible. And, in fact, public opinion was rapidly changing in their favor at that time. The judicial route followed through Brown v. Board of Education — itself, incidentally, only one in a series of decisions beginnning in the 1930s attacking segregation in education — was only one path, not the sole one used. Paradoxically, it was only after the Civil Rights and Voting Acts were democratically passed that it was solemnly explained to us that everything depended on the guidance of the platonic guardians of the law. Mr. Auster actually understates the sliminess and dishonesty of the left. I think, or at least hope, that he is right that judicial fiat is the only way the left can get homosexual “marriage.”

It’s true that the passage of the Civil Rights Act in Congress would tend to disprove the Roberts and Stratton thesis that the civil rights movement believed that civil rights could only be passed by judicial fiat. Yet the _instant_ way that which the Civil Rights Act was surreptiously changed into a racial quota act shows that the kinds of laws that COULD be passed by elected legislatures would NOT meet the real aim of the civil rights movement, which was substantive black equality, not a mere end of discrimination.

I thoroughly agree, though I would reword “substantive black equality” as “pretended equality of results” since even here there is self-deception. Affirmative action really means, “sure, you haven’t been properly educated and don’t possess the necessary qualifications, but we’ll pretend you are.”

On one level, Sullivan is right.
The danger of majority rule is of course the tendency toward mob rule. As I sometimes put it, gang rape is in a sense democratic, as the perpetrators outnumber and outvote the victims.
However, the fact that marriage confers certain “positive rights” to people in our culture makes the idea of a “right to marriage” antilibertarian (if we are just looking at issues of “state encroachment”).
In other words, as long as employers, landlords, etc., are forced to give these people marriage benefits, gay marriage is an imposition on those who do not believe in it, because they are forced to sanction it.
Moreover, though, there is the simple fact that “gay marriage” is a contradiction in terms. This is a complete societal reworking of what marriage is and what it means. Whether for love, or for business, western societies have defined marriage as one man and one woman since at least the advent of Christianity. The Supreme Court here is not just creating legal precendent, it is attempting to redefine the basic unit of society, the family.

A big dilemma here is that an emancipated and independent judiciary represents a great achievement in the history of the Anglo-Saxon struggle for liberty. Even a cursory review of the history leading up to its development reveals how necessary it was, and is. None of us would want a return to the servile tribunals of the past, indeed, this was perhaps the leading cause of the Revolution.

But the Anglo-Saxon race has demonstrably failed to place an effective check on this power. So much was taken for granted, as it was always understood that the among the highest rights of freemen was that only their elective representatives could make laws to which they could justly be bound. The courts cannot make law, but the courts have made _themselves_ law.

The most recent example of a State legislature asserting its prerogatives against a rogue judiciary occured in Florida in the 2000 Election, when the legislature certified its own slate of Presidential Electors. That would have set up an interesting battle, (though only of symbolic significance in the long run), had the Supreme Court not justly smacked the State Court down.

What to do? We can’t invoke the amendment process every time one or another judicial body overextends itself. We will needs God’s help to even get a marriage amendment through. Something more fundamental is needed to rein in this dangerous and unchecked power before it destroys the foundations of our republican form of govt. on both the State and Federal levels. And I confess I have no answer to the dilemma.

Mr. Hume:

The “once a couple begins to care” standard troubles me. Define care. Define once.

And aren’t we trying to limit government and bureaucracy? Are we going to hold hearings for all parents regarding levels of care?

And isn’t it a bit unduly harsh towards those marrieds who can’t have children? Don’t they have enough problems without having to be treated as sort of second-class?

Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a rule, either explicit or implicit, that marriage is to be lmited to the traditional definition?

I don’t argue against your assessment that the institution of marriage [with relation to the state] has drifted from its original purpose of supporting the continuation of humanity by supporting children and the families who raise them. Society as a whole has drifted from that. The Pill, etc., has fundamentally altered the way things are.

However, I disagree with the proposed prescription.

Joel LeFevre’s post above raises a very good question.
The Framers of the Constitution, it seems, did not foresee the problem we now face. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist #78, writes that the judiciary is a “barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body.” But now, in many cases, it’s the judiciary which is encroaching and oppressing. Hamilton wrote that while the legislature holds the purse and the executive wields the sword,”the judiciary…will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution.” What if Hamilton could see what’s going on today?

Mr. Jose raises an interesting point regarding the fallacy of raising majority rule itself to the level of transcendent morality. After all, wasn’t Adolph Hitler legitimately elected by the majority of German voters in 1933? Does that fact automatically lend moral legitimacy to his regime? Only a Nazi would argue that it does.

The root of the problem with Sullivan’s argument is that the transcendent morality which trumps majority rule in his view is the one of liberalism - radical equality - as opposed to the older, Judeo-Christian code that forms the true basis of our civilization. This goes back to an idea several of us have raised here at VFR, that liberalism is in fact an alternate religion - a counterfeit of Christianity which promises heaven on earth. Andrew Sullivan and George Bush are both true beilevers in this new religion of the West.

Regarding Carl’s statement I may be wrong and would appreciate correction if so, but Hitler was essentially in power already anyway. When Hindenburg died, Hitler basically abolished the office of the presidency and declared himself “Fuhrer and Chancellor.” The ‘election’ we hear about was not one in the sense of choosing among candidates, it was essentially an up or down vote for what was already de facto in place.

Stalin won his ‘elections’ too in the same manner — one candidate. Carl has a valid point of course; I think it comes down to the structure and framework wherein a popular referedum occurs. But we can only take this so far.

Our Electoral College system remains a check against a lunatic like Hitler taking office, but suppose the people of the States did, in a moment of misguided passion, (like if one of our cities was nuked), elect someone like him, fully in the manner in which our primaries and elections are pursued — by what criteria could we then say that his presidency were illegitimate?

As to the historical details of Hitler’s rise to power, I was always under the impression that Hindenburg was largely a figurehead even before elected - that most people were aware that Hitler was the real person in charge. Like Joel, please correct me if I’m wrong here, as my knowledge of German history is superficial.

The underlying point of my last post was that majority rule does not guarantee moral legitimacy in government. The voters and electors or the United States chose Bill Clinton, a man who betrayed the country, in 1992. John Adams made the statement that our system of representative government would work only for a moral people, a society in which the majority were in agreement with the foundational morality of Judeo-Christian civilization.

The crux of my argument is that Sullivan, Bush, and the ruling oligarchs, along with a significant portion - perhaps even a majority - of the electorate, have rejected the tradtional Judeo-Christian morality and substituted in its place the precepts of what we at VFR refer to as liberalism (which has a much broader meaning than the common political definition).

Mr. Wall makes a key point. But this problem is not merely an issue of the Federal Court encroaching on the States’ reserved powers, as last year’s disastrous Lawrence decision — though we can probably expect to see more of this where homosexual ‘rights’ are concerned. We deal here with the whole matter of judicial power itself.

It is a _State_ court that has initiated this impending catastrophe, though it is of course based on previous Supreme Court rulings. I just downloaded and skimmed the Goodrich ruling that started this trouble in Mass. and what I saw made me nearly fall out of my chair.

In a previous thread last Dec, http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001997.html, I made this statement: “It is already clear to me that merely extending the logic in the Loving v. Virginia case on State anti-miscegenation laws combined with the travesty of Lawrence v. Texas, we could see a pro-SSU ruling from the Supreme Court.”

Now following is a key quote from the Goodrich decision: “The court concludes, however, that [the State law] unconstitutionally discriminates against the individual plaintiffs because it denies them the “right to marry the person of one’s choice” where that person is of the same sex. To reach this result the court relies on Loving v. Virginia … and transforms “choice” in to the essential element of the institution of marriage… .”

The Mass Supr. Ct. acknowledges that the Loving decision “did not imply the existence of a right to marry a person of the same sex” but simply extends that decision into novel territory in an act of raw, illegitimate, and unrestrained judicial power.

Regardless of one’s feeling on the old State anti-miscegenation laws, the Loving v. Virginia case was clearly another case of the Supreme Court amending the Constitution. The history of the Debates on the 14th Amendment dealt with such laws and it is unimpeachably clear that the Amendment was never intended to interfere with them, agreeable to repeated statements to that effect.

Eventually, the Supreme Court will likely end up addressing this question as well. I shudder to think of what will result.

Actually, Mr. Wall was undoubtedly referring to the Supreme Courts intrusion into the powers of the other branches of the Federal govt. and not just its encroachments against the States. Sorry to sound like I was limiting his point.

Carl wrote:

“The root of the problem with Sullivan’s argument is that the transcendent morality which trumps majority rule in his view is the one of liberalism - radical equality - as opposed to the older, Judeo-Christian code that forms the true basis of our civilization.”

Great point. Yes, there must be a higher law that all written laws ultimately appeal to and are judged by. In the 1850s, that law was basic Christian morality. Thus Lincoln could argue that, while he had no intention or desire to interfere with slavery where it already existed as a result of history, it was wrong for Congress to allow new territories to decide by majority rule that slavery was ok. But in today’s liberal society, that higher law is not traditional morality. That higher law is liberalism itself. And furthermore, that higher law is improperly used to justify courts overthrowing the acts of legislatures.

Lincoln, by contrast, was NOT arguing that courts can appeal to higher law to overthrow legislative acts. He was appealing to higher law to show why it was wrong for _Congress_, in the Kansas Nebraska Act, to allow local majorities to institute slavery. He was using higher law as it ought to be used, as an argument to show that a particular law is wrong and ought to be repealed by the legislature, not as a basis for the judicial usurpation of the legislative function.

On a very different point, Carl writes:

“I was always under the impression that Hindenburg was largely a figurehead even before elected - that most people were aware that Hitler was the real person in charge.”

In one sense, Hitler was certainly running the show from the moment he became Chancelor in January 1933. But his hold on power was insecure. For one thing (I may be wrong on this point), Hindenberg while alive could still have dismissed him. More importantly, the army could have thrown him out. The significance of the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 was that the army pledged its loyalty to Hitler in exchange for his purging of the Brownshirts, which removed an unruly and troublesome rival for the army’s place in German society. From that point on, with the Wehrmacht’s backing, Hitler’s grip on power was unassailable. William Shirer condemns the Wehrmacht very strongly for this.

Another point worth making about the Loving v. Virginia case is that it was used by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in its notorious “Compassion in Dying” decision, (1996 WL 94848 (9TH CIR.(WASH.)) which struck down the State of Washington’s ban on physician-assisted suicide.

The court there used the seemingly unrelated Loving case strictly as an example to bolster its argument for rejecting Strict Constructionism in favor of the power of the judiciary to declare the meaning of the Constitution any way the judges see fit, regardless of original intent or established precedent.

Re: Hitler’s rise to power

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the fact that the Nazis had won the plurality of seats in the Reichstag (parliament) in the 1932 election was a major part of Hitler’s rise to power. So it seems to me that Hitler’s rise to power was at least somewhat democratic.

To read these various liberal Supreme Court decisions of the last 70 years, as Mr. LeFevre is doing, is to journey through the belly of the beast.

Chris Collins writes, in response to my original posting:

“The “once a couple begins to care” standard troubles me. Define care. Define once. “

Perhaps the writer was trying to be too general. I would take it simply to mean that a couple accepts responsibility by natural birth or by adoption.

“And aren’t we trying to limit government and bureaucracy? Are we going to hold hearings for all parents regarding levels of care?”

So I don’t think that there would be any substantial increase of government… the definition of “care” need not be subtle.

“And isn’t it a bit unduly harsh towards those marrieds who can’t have children? Don’t they have enough problems without having to be treated as sort of second-class?”

I wouldn’t think of them being second-class. They would be treated just as single people are. In the eyes of the church they would have those blessings suitable to the religious sacrament regardless of having children or of the opinion of the state.

One could argue along this line that the state should encourage marriage, regardless of children, in order to reduce promiscuity. It is true that this would be lost, and this would be unfortunate. However, there still is the saying that two can live as cheaply as one… that discourages promiscuity, perhaps.

Lawrence Auster writes:
“There’s no question that the thinning-out of marriage to just a mutually satisfying relationship between two persons, rather than as the central formative institution of human society including the raising of children, means that there seems to be less reason to oppose homosexual marriage. That’s why, in the long run, a complete rejection of modern sexual liberation is necessary. But in the short run, we still have to oppose the immediate threat of homosexual marriage.”

My thinking is that if the governmental benefits of marriage are restricted to married couples with children that then homosexual marriage will cease to be of interest to homosexuals and will die out. I doubt that most homosexual couples will long be interested in raising children who are not related to at least of the couple.

Without the benefits from the state, I expect that most of the homosexuals will not bother with the blessings of the church. A few will, but not many, because most will not really be intertested in the institution.

Mr. Hume’s proposal is thought-provoking, but I am doubtful. Yes, society should favor marriage and the raising of children. What we need is a restoration of traditional morality. In the older society, marriage received respect and special recognition in the law. The law did not deprive childless couples of that recognition. Considering that a return to traditional morality is already an almost impossible-seeming task, Mr. Hume’s notion that we exclude childless couples from the benefits of marriage, thus aiming at something even stricter and more demanding than traditional morality, seems unrealistic.

Mr. Auster comments on an issue that Matt has unequivocably stated his onerous position: copulation is for reproduction only. Matt might be wrong according to our Cathoic Magisterium, but I don’t have the counterargument, if any.

Mr. Murgos wrote: “…I don’t have the counterargument, if any.”

I can think of 1 or 2 passages of Scripture that would constitute a counter-argument, but I don’t think that would matter much to Matt.

The fact that 1,500 years of Scripture teaches no such thing would be enough of an argument for me — I am SURE that doesn’t matter to Matt.

I think I did tentatively agree with Matt, after some discussion, that traditional morality excludes sodomistic acts between husband and wife. But I never agreed with him on sex for reproduction only, if that was what he said.

The state should favor heterosexual marriage without children as compared to singlehood or cohabitation (heterosexual or homosexual), and should favor heterosexual marriage with children above marriage without children.

Conservatives should simply advocate the point of view that the future of a society depends most heavily on heterosexuals raising children. Period. Cohabitation is demonstrably less stable and less beneficial to children, and singles and homosexuals do not produce children. It should be made clear that the policy advocated is not negative; it does not seek to attack singles, gays, cohabiting heterosexuals, or childless couples. It seeks only to positively assist heterosexual parents. All charges of homophobia and other leftist bugaboos can simply be deflected by noting that gays are lumped in with hetero singles and cohabitants and are not singled out for any special opprobrium.

Why provide a limited positive assistance from government to heterosexual childless couples? Several reasons: (1) In the years immediately after marriage, especially marriage at younger ages, hetero couples could be desperately trying to save money, buy a home, etc., in preparation for having children. Tax breaks or other favorable treatment will help them get to their goal, which we favor as a society. (2) Even when a couple appears happy to be a dual-income childless couple, they might surprise you. The biological clock starts ticking, and you would be amazed at some of the transformations I have seen from “I only care about my career” to “I want to be a stay-at-home mom.” Thus, they are in the same category as in reason #1 and don’t yet know it. (3) Empty nesters have an important traditional role to fill as grandparents and might well be helping pay private school tuition, etc., that the parents cannot manage on their own.

Summing up these reasons, as people pass through the stages of life that constitute a clear path to traditional family life, we want to be supportive, and not at just one stage. While it is possible that any given single person or cohabitant might have a change of lifestyle and get on that path in the future, there is no present evidence for it. Ditto for gays. The entire policy should be presented as a sane approach to making a good future for the country, and anti-homosexual venom can be left out of the discussion entirely. Even if the actions of gay rights radicals have created contempt within us, our FEELINGS are not the issue; the future of the civilization is the issue.

I agree with Mr Coleman’s sentiments. Many of the heterosexual couples he discusses would reap lifetime (post-childbirth) benefits under the plan that I suggest (benefits if children have been supported). These would include empty-nesters.

He wants future parents to have benefits before birth of their child.

I would like that also, of course, but I see no way to avoid the equal protection argument…. I’ll think about it.

What’t this about “avoiding the equal protection argument?”

First of all, you persuade the majority of the public based on common sense. Secondly, you are proposing treating one group differently than another, so how does “equal protection” fit into your scheme? Thirdly, if homosexuals claim they want to “marry” and adopt children, on what basis do you deny them equality of benefits other than the basis I have outlined (that it is normative, and best for the children, to be raised in a married heterosexual-parent home)? Fourth, on what basis would you deny equal legal benefits to cohabitants who are “caring for children”?

Either we can make the persuasive public case for married heterosexual parents being in the best long-term interests of the society, or we cannot. If we can, then it follows that persons living that lifestyle can be privileged above those who are not, never have, and don’t seem likely to do so in the near future. If we cannot, then the family as we know it will dissolve. All other political strategies can be dismissed.

To think that we cannot make such a case, and need to think up something more clever and Machiavellian to sneak our policy through, is to say that this nation is beyond hope already.

Re marriage and copulation being only for reproduction — no Christian church, nor, as far as I know, any other social force, has ever maintained this. Societies have always sanctioned the marriage of sterile people and people beyond child-bearing age. The differentiation between marriages without children and those with, which Mr. Hume emphasizes, cannot be taken too far, though obviously the latter are more entitled to society’s resources.

Has it occurred to anyone that “homos” ALREADY have the same right as “heteros” to marry in every state? I.e., no right at all… for marriage is not a right but a privilege.

To continue the February 7, 2004 01:54 PM posting with Mr. Coleman…

Perhaps couples who married and who declared that they intended to bring up children could immediately gain preferential governmental benefits. If, after some years they were not bringing up children, then there would be some penalty, perhaps recovery of benefits through the tax code, unless they could present evidence from doctors, etc., that they had attempted to conceive children and had failed. Should they later succeed, then those penalties could be restored.

Moving on to more recent postings:

What do I mean by “equal protection”? I mean that I do not think that if we grant government benefits to a married heterosexual couple without children, that we can persuade a court to not allow a homosexual couple to go through the bureaucratic/secular hoop required to also receive those benefits. The “hoop” is called marriage. Of course there are religious aspects to marriage also, or even primarily. But these are not at issue.

I don’t think of my ideas to tie those benefits to the actual raising of children as a “clever and Machiavellian (way) to sneak our policy through”. Instead I think of it as a way, firmly rooted in biology and in the true historical foundation of marriage as an institution, to ensure that the intrinsic morality and justice of our policy prevails.

I agree with Mr. Levine that no society has viewed marriage as only a means to facilitate procreation. But I do believe that that goal has been dominant. And it is closely related to the goal of facilitating alliances between clans; a goal very unimportant in the West today. The reason we have to depart from history today is the increase in number of married heterosexual couples who never have children.

The main goal we want to foster is raising children well… in a two-parent (far preferentially heterosexual) family.

As I have stated previously, it is my belief that my policy would take the steam out of homosexual marriage and that there would be very few of them were my policy implemented.

Mr. Hume’s 1:47PM posting seems like a total communication disconnect to me. In this country, we are talking about amending the Constitution to protect the traditional family. We can explicitly state in the amendment whatever we want, as long as it passes the common sense test and gains widespread political support for its ratification. In which case, who cares what liberal judges say? If we are going to try to address our current problems with homosexual radicals by statute, allowing judges to interpret them, then we are doomed.

The proposal to give tax benefits to married couples and then penalize them later if they don’t have children and cannot prove medical infertility, etc., is about as unconservative an idea as I can imagine. What demons is Mr. Hume trying to placate with these proposals? Who cares what leftists think? We are not trying to persuade them of anything.

I repeat: We can write any constitutional amendment we want, unless it is unreasonable and cannot possibly win ratification.

I’ll be happy with a constitutional amendment if we can get it. Another failure of Bush is that he is not leading this fight.

If we fail, then perhaps some will revisit some of my ideas. I agree at least that my ideas are unappealing. For one thing, no one likes to lose privileges.

I find myself reading this page and finding no tangible downside to allowing same-sex marriage. Many people refer to the theoretical weakening of marriage, but I fail to understand why people need the government to define marriage the same way their religious views do. Certainly that which is against religious law is often legal - this is what keeps us from being one of the fundamentalist societies we’re eager to open up to American notions of freedom.

I imagine religious people reconcile this discrepancy by recognizing their faith as their own guide, independent of federal statute. My religion (Reform Judaism) has for years officially acknowledged the sanctity of same-sex unions and I find all that statements that same-sex marriage goes against “religion” as an entity to be skating perilously close to the state playing favorites with religious establishment.

As for tangible downsides, even if marriage is designed to promote responsible procreation, I fail to see how a homosexual union could actually hinder the goal of procreation. Gay people who are already in couples would simply have tax breaks and an ability to jointly own property. They’d be having no fewer children than before. Straight people would go on having children just as they always have. Is “the future of civilization” really at stake? Are you or I about to leave our opposite-sex partners as soon as it’s legal?

As a straight male engaged to be married in the summertime, I find myself ashamed of the institution of marriage, as I would of membership in an all-white country club. Sure, you’re only denying the blacks that you don’t let into your club “positive benefits.” You’re not actually lynching anyone. But you’re sending a very clear message about superiority and inferiority.

The only difference is that in the case of the country club, you’d actually have to share your physical facilities with the people you wish to keep out. With marriage, no one’s even asking that much of you.

Also, to Mr. Coleman who refers to “homosexual radicals” pushing for equal rights, I’ll have you know that I am neither homosexual nor radical, so I would appreciate not being addressed as such.

I can’t respond to Mr. Morrow right now, but I want to quote this sentence from his comment, which conveys an essential attitude of modern liberalism:

“As a straight male engaged to be married in the summertime, I find myself ashamed of the institution of marriage, as I would of membership in an all-white country club.”

Yes indeed: in that statement we have a fine encapsulation of the modern world’s insanity.

Mr. Cella, I feel I’ve done the courtesy of engaging member of this forum on the logic and substance of their arguments. I ask nothing more than that same consideration.

What in my analogy strikes the people here as logically flawed or, truer to your post, as representing all the insanity of the modern world? And what of the rest of my questions?

Eagerly awaiting your clarification.

Mr. Morrow wrote: “Also, to Mr. Coleman who refers to ‘homosexual radicals’ pushing for equal rights, I’ll have you know that I am neither homosexual nor radical, so I would appreciate not being addressed as such.”

Who says I was addressing you? You had not yet posted to the thread when I made my comments. I refer to homosexual radicals who push for gay marriage, because there are homosexual radicals who are pushing for gay marriage. There may be heterosexuals who agree with them. So what? I was not addressing them.

To Mr. Morrow, perhaps no one here has the time to lay out the entire case for you. You could start with Maggie Gallagher’s article, “What Marriage is for”:

http://www.theweeklystandard.com/check.asp?idArticle=2939&r=pxiqa

However, a brief answer to your question is that homosexual marriage would transform the very meaning of marriage. For one thing, since marriage is no longer to be defined as a man and a woman, but as any two persons, therefore the very concept of “husband” and “wife” would have to be thrown out as discriminatory, since it could only apply to heterosexual married couples, not homosexual married couples. They’ll have to start calling each other their “partners,” instead.

Marriage is a larger whole that draws a man and a woman together, who then form a family, and that becomes the nucleus of society. Marriage takes lots of sacrifices. It has to MEAN something in order for people to make those sacrifices. But homosexual marriage, by transforming marriage into an arrangement for the satisfaction of the partners’ “desires” and “rights” and “self-esteem” and “equality,” would degrade marriage inconceivably. It would become radically devalued. Once marriage is made into a perverted travesty by having homosexual “marriages,” lots of men and women, and especially the men, will feel that marriage is not really special and not really worth it. Who wants to join an institution that now means Adam and Steve instead of Adam and Eve?

Look up Stanley Kurtz’s recent articles on how gay unions in Scandinavia have had the effect of further reducing the marriage rate and increasing out-of-wedlock births.

Mr. Morrow:

You depict the institution of marriage as something to be ashamed of, as something meriting a comparison to base racial prejudice, and even, obliquely, to lynching. The question rises imperatively: why in his right mind would a man enter voluntarily into so vile an institution?

As with another recent commenter on this website, you appear unable to see the vastness of the gulf that separates your own position from ours. And, I’ll add, you seem unable or unwilling to follow the logic of your position to its conclusion: namely, that marriage should be abolished and condemned utterly, as something resembling Segregation in the American South.

Perhaps I can clarify our position for you. The great majority of us here assent to the biblical or Christian view of homosexuality as a sin, a sexual perversion. This is not some benighted surrender of reason to nonrational prejudice; for reason and empirical evidence shows us in abundance the damage wrought by sexual sin — damage which is, by and large, inflicted on the weakest among us.

So when you write of traditional marriage, “You’re not actually lynching anyone, [b]ut you’re sending a very clear message about superiority and inferiority,” we shake our heads at the first irresponsibly intemperate remark, but we find nothing to dispute in the second, despite the sneer which you wrap it in. In short, we AFFIRM, without hesitation, the superiority of traditional sexuality to all the countless ruinous innovations unleashed across the centuries of human society. It follows, then, that we would feel no guilt about declaring that Yes, friends, monogamous heterosexual marriage is immeasurably superior to any ersatz homosexual variety.

My use of the word “insane” to describe your simultaneous condemnation of marriage and admission that you plan to join in this act, by your arguments, of degradation, was not thoughtless. To my mind, it is quite insane for a man to voluntarily commit himself, his honor, and his loved ones, to an institution he is ashamed of. It is as if I were to say, Few things are as dispicable to me as the Roman Catholic Church, yet next summer I plan to join it.

An analogy might be made of John Kerry and his frightful condemnation of Vietnam-era America before Congress in 1971: If Mr. Kerry was right, and Vietnam had driven the people of this country, our leaders, our generals and our soldiers, to systematic criminal brutality against innocents, then logic tells us that we ought to brand America an evil substance and work for its demise. One cannot at once be a patriot, AND call one’s country a criminal enterprise.

To think otherwise is to think like a madman.

To return to Mr. Morrow’s quote:

“As a straight male engaged to be married in the summertime, I find myself ashamed of the institution of marriage, as I would of membership in an all-white country club. Sure, you’re only denying the blacks that you don’t let into your club ‘positive benefits.’ You’re not actually lynching anyone. But you’re sending a very clear message about superiority and inferiority.”

For Mr. Morrow, the institution of marriage that doesn’t include homosexual marriage is the moral equivalent of racial exclusion of blacks from a country club, which in turn is a (non-violent) moral equivalent of lynching.

That’s why I said earlier that Mr. Morrow had expressed perhaps the essential attitude of modern liberalism. All institutions must be absolutely inclusive of everyone, even of people and cultures that are completely incompatible with those institutions. Any institutions that fail this test are vile and evil. But no institutions can survive this demand. Liberalism is simply a demand for the suicide of human society.

How then do the liberals avoid the suicide, at least for the short term? Through the unprincipled exception. Thus Mr. Morrow, despite the fact that he regards the institution of marriage as close to the moral equivalent of lynching, plans to get married next summer. Mr. Cella is wrong when he says this contradiction makes Mr. Morrow insane; Morrow is just being a typical liberal who demonizes society even as he seeks its benefits and goodies for himself. He enjoys the goodies, while simultaneously trying to make everyone else guilty for living in such a corrupt society.

In the same way, John Kerry wants to lead the United States and boasts constantly about his patriotism, even though he regards America as a criminal Nazi-like country. Kerry’s not mad, he’s just a typical modern liberal practicing the unprincipled exception.

(By the way, if Kerry doesn’t feel that way about America, did he ever renounce his 1971 testimony to Congress?)

I wrote:

“Morrow is just being a typical liberal who demonizes society even as he seeks its benefits and goodies for himself. He enjoys the goodies, while simultaneously trying to make everyone else guilty for living in such a corrupt society.”

This by the way is very similar to the view that Lincoln held of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats of his time, that they played a class warfare politics of denouncing “the powerful” for oppressing the common man. In fact, Lincoln understood, the “powerful” ones being denounced were the _middle class_, the upwardly mobile, the people like himself who were trying to make something of their lives instead of just living as subsistence farmers, as Jefferson wanted them to do. In other words, the Democrats, who posed as egalitarians, were elites who thrived by making working men and farmers hate the commercial middle class. Jefferson was the epitome of this type. (Lincoln, despite his worship of the Declaration of Independence, was a Whig who opposed most of what Jefferson actually stood for.) Similarly today, liberals are elites who thrive by making the “oppressed” hate ordinary Americans and ordinary American values.

We could probably do this for weeks, and I’m fine to keep going if everyone else is. But just to followup on some of the comments made in response to my own remarks.

First, I’ve read Ms. Gallagher’s piece in the Standard, and while well-written, it remains unconvincing. Jews can define what is kosher without a government ban on pork. Catholics can define lent without a government mandated fast. Marriage can still maintain the same meaning it has always had for adherents to religions that wish to define it. What Ms. Gallagher does imply through her arguments about the cultural universaility of marriage is that the government could do away with the institution altogether in its laws and religions would keep marrying people. Simply put, as we are humans, nothing can possibly threaten marriage.

I wish to clarify for Mr. Cella as to why I intend to enter into an institution whose exclusionary nation I find shameful. It has been argued in this page that marriage confers “positive benefits” or, as Mr. Auster described them above “goodies.”

But the fact of the matter is that these goodies, while not legal entitlements in the same sense as one’s right to vote or to own property, are things we take for granted and consider essential to building a family.

I could choose not to marry out of principled dissent, which would be an abstract form of protest (and likely a useless one), but just as I feel our fellow gay Americans need the benefits conferred by marriage, I do, as well. I need to be able to jointly own property, to ensure that should I or my spouse leave our jobs to raise a young child, one of us can provide the other with health care, or that should anything happen to me it is legally clear who the family who should inherit my belongings is.

And it’s true, the constitution has never guaranteed these things as our rights. They are “goodies,” but they are goodies we take for granted. We treat them like entitlements because to raise a traditional family (regardless of gender composition) in the absence of marriage is prohibitively difficult both legally and logistically.

Additionally, the flaw with Mr. Cella’s analogy to the Catholic Church is that marriage itself is not creating these rules that I so vehemently oppose. Groups like the GOP, the Alliance for Marriage, the American Family Asssociation - these are groups who, among many others, wish to make/enforce exclusive marriage rights. I have no intention of joining them, no matter what positive benefits they can give me.

To clarify my reference of lynching, when I point out that “You’re not lynching anyone,” I said that not to equate the exclusions of homosexuals from marriage to lynching, but to point out that I am capable of making a distinction of degrees. My apologies if it was unclear.

Regarding Jefferson and Jackson, I have no interest in being associated with their political legacy. I come from the strong federalist, big government, civil rights championing tradition of Abraham Lincoln, who stood for equality and a progressive income tax, to boot. Most modern Republicans I know who favor states’ rights and traditional values would have surely voted Douglas. (If you’re unfamiliar with party realignment, I recommend Louis Gould’s “Grand Old Party,” which is a wonderfully detailed history of the organization.)

Also, to quickly deal with Mr. Auster claims that “therefore the very concept of “husband” and “wife” would have to be thrown out as discriminatory, since it could only apply to heterosexual married couples,” I’d like to point out that Merriam-Webster would not even need to revise. “Husband” is defined as “a male partner in a marriage.” Gay male marriages actually have two husbands, rather than none. “Wife” is defined as “a female partner in a marriage.” Again, lesbian marriages would have those. Rather than close up shop and declare society doomed, government forms could refer to “spouses” or, if they like, to “husband/wife” in all places. I simply fail to see your point that the terms would become exclusionary and invalid.

And lastly, on Mr. Auster’s series of statements about how liberalism demands that “all institutions must be absolutely inclusive of everyone, even of people and cultures that are completely incompatible with those institutions,” that statement is patently false. As a liberal, I can probably better speak to my own view on that axiom.

The Catholic Church can exclude whomever it likes. The Episcopal Church can do the same, for all I care. So can the Salvation Army (so long as it expects no government money). The only institution that I demand be all inclusive are the civil institutions of the United States, its Constitution, and its government. And even there, I’ll gladly support a law against treason.

If you think liberalism is truly the “demand for the suicide of human society,” (an odd charge to make of the ideology accused of favoring big government), then I’m afraid you’ve been speaking to the wrong liberals.

Mr. Morrow ridicules the suggestion that liberalism, “the ideology accused of favoring big government”, could also be seen as a demand for the suicide of human society. Is it really possible that he does not see any difference between human society and government, between community, culture or civilization and the managerial state? By his criteria, it would also be absurd to think that Stalinist Russia was hostile to human society - after all, Stalin had a really big bureaucracy.

It is equally hard to know what to make of Mr. Morrow’s apparently serious claim that the concept of homosexual “marriage” is consistent with the established use of the terms “husband” and “wife”. Dictionaries define “husbands” as male spouses and “wives” as female spouses because the established use of the term “marriage” refers to a heterosexual partnership - a partnership between a husband and wife. Mr. Morrow may find this apalling, but surely there is no serious question that this is in fact how the word “marriage” has always been used.

If lexicographers did not feel the need to specify that a husband is the male partner *of a wife*, and not of another “husband”, that is because up until last week it would have been so staggeringly obvious as to go without saying. Likewise, lexicographers do not specify that the “male partner in a marriage” must be a human being rather than an elephant or a house fly. Is it really necessary to point this out?

Why does Mr. Morrow engage in this linguistic sophistry? My 1976 World Book Dictionary defines the relevant words thus:

Husband. - a man who has a wife; married man.
Etymology: Old English, head of a
family.

Wife. - a woman who has a husband; married
woman. Etymology: Old English: woman;
wife.

Marriage - 1. the act of living together as
husband and wife; wedlock 2. the
condition of being husband and
wife. Etymology: Latin: maritus - husband

But these dictionary definition ought not be necessary; it has been understood by all human traditions of which I am aware that marriage is between a man and a woman.(Polygamy is the concurence of marriages between a man and a woman; as opposed to polyamory, the next civil right, which is group love.)

It would seem to be more reasonable for Mr. Morrow to argue that the traditional terms “husband”, “wife”, and “marriage”, and the ideas which they represent are antiquated, exclusionary, and unjust; and that therefore they must be abolished or abandoned. Rather, he argues that the aforementioned terms can be used accorrectly and unironically to denominate or describe homosexual “partnerships.”

The proposition that liberals demand the suicide of human society is clearly intended as a statement of the consequence of liberal ideology and not a description of the conscious thoughts of liberals. The denial of this by an intelligent person is changing the subject, because now we are wasting time defending the obvious.

The proposition that all relationships are equal means relationships have no meaning.

Every law is a discrimination, and a call for no discrimination is a call for no law, which is obviously nonsense. Civil institutions discriminate against those who believe only some relationships are morally acceptable when the institution writes or interprets laws declaring other relationships are worthy of society’s acceptance. That we should preclude religious people from reflecting their religious or moral beliefs in their laws is an argument for anarchy. People’s beliefs and government are inseparable.

Moreover invoking some supposedly secular creed, the Constitution, as a moral justification for something is invoking a religious belief, the very thing liberals dismiss as illegitimate authority. America’s institutions are sacred to liberals, but only if their actions reflect liberal beliefs.

Proposing that liberals don’t demand total inclusiveness, declaring oneself a liberal, and then demanding that one’s government be totally inclusive is self-contradictory.

Well, I am out of time.

“Proposing that liberals don’t demand total inclusiveness, declaring oneself a liberal, and then demanding that one’s government be totally inclusive is self-contradictory.”

I think Mr. Murgos has gotten to the heart of what Mr. Morrow and other liberals are up to. Their project is to make every institution inclusive, racially and sexually proportionate, and so on. When faced with a conservative resistance to that project, they have what they think is a clever answer, to quote Mr. Morrow, “The only institution that I demand be all inclusive are the civil institutions of the United States,” while religious institutions and, he adds, private organizations such as the Salvation Army “if they recieve no government money” could continue to discriminate. Gosh, doesn’t that sound reasonable? But even as the liberals make this sophisticated and re-assuring comment, they are aggressively spreading government controls over more and more of society, and it certainly doesn’t stop at institutions that receive government money. The real aim of liberals is to bring more and more of society under the control of the state and dependent on the state, which would mean that no part of society would be free from anti-discrimination laws. Sure, if someone is meeting in a basement somewhere, the state will leave him alone. But the state is so all-pervasive that it’s very difficult for any significant organization to function without some government involvement. For example, the Boy Scouts meet in public buildings such as schools, just as lots of other organizations do, and that fact has been used to exclude them because of their refusal to let declared sodomites have authority over young boys. But the basic logic wouldn’t stop at the use of a public building. After all, the government paves the streets the people use to drive to the church, the government regulates the electric power company that the church uses, the government regulates the phone lines that the church uses; so why should the church be able to act as if it’s not dependent on the government and therefore subject to all its anti-discrimination laws?

I find it so ironic that Mr. Morrow makes his exception concerning private organizations that don’t take government money, when, as we all know, lots of private organizations that don’t take government money are already under the hand of the anti-discriminatory apparatus of the state.

What is further disturbing is that, given the “mainstream” appearance and tone of American liberalism, liberals can carry on this totalitarian program while sounding like perfectly normal, reasonable Americans. That’s certainly the way Mr. Morrow sees himself.

Cella:
“One cannot at once be a patriot, AND call one’s country a criminal enterprise.”
One cannot be a sheep, AND not have to worry about the wolf hidden in sheep’s clothing.
Jingoism is not the mark of patriotism…it’s the mark of an unthinking suicidal maniac. Before complaining about suicidal terrorists, think about what kind of thinking led them to that conclusion. And speaking of suicide….

Auster:
“How then do the liberals avoid the suicide, at least for the short term?”
I don’t know how, maybe we can avoid rhetorical labeling of people and stick to the point instead of demonizing those who may have equally good intent and civilly explain their views? From what I’ve seen, Mr. Morrow hasn’t made any statements worthy of being called suicidal…and that is a gross mischaracterization of what he’s said as you’ve connected one of his beliefs to all of his other beliefs he has not expounded upon. Basically, it’s unfair to say that belief in one topic is belief in all liberal views. Stick to the point.

P Murgos:
“The proposition that liberals demand the suicide of human society is clearly intended as a statement of the consequence of liberal ideology and not a description of the conscious thoughts of liberals. The denial of this by an intelligent person is changing the subject, because now we are wasting time defending the obvious. “

The intent is certainly not clear as the original phrasing contained both connotations.
Perhaps it should have been rephrased, but it is a moot point now. It’s easy to say you’re “wasting time defending the obvious,” but it wasn’t too long ago in human history that it was “obvious” that women and blacks shouldn’t have the right to vote.

“The proposition that all relationships are equal means relationships have no meaning. “

Now that’s a huge jump in conclusions where you’ve gone from A to D without looking at B and C. Now if I were to say a mutually exclusive relationship financially, sexually, and emotionally regardless of gender, I don’t see how you can conclude that has no meaning. I think people need to avoid such blanket statements in here as it is a mark of unwarranted and unproven arrogance to do so. And quite honestly, it makes you look silly.

All: perhaps you should see who jumped first to name-calling. While I personally know that arguments in online forums result in this quite easily, (and personally, a good flame war is quite enjoyable) perhaps trying to argue without resorting to heavy-handed generalizations and insults…perhaps don’t use any….or just stick to warranted ones that can’t be ridiculed.

Joshua:

“It would seem to be more reasonable for Mr. Morrow to argue that the traditional terms “husband”, “wife”, and “marriage”, and the ideas which they represent are antiquated, exclusionary, and unjust; and that therefore they must be abolished or abandoned. “

Good point on arguing on a different ground than dictionary definitions…as it is truly the best grounds to do it on, but I disagree that they must be abandoned or abolished so much as added on to. Perhaps to you it is the same, but orthodox churches certainly won’t change their definition. The right to practice religion is also the right to not practice religion. Perhaps the argument is best shifted to whether the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution covers the issue and not over “traditional values” as traditional values are often so ingrained that they cannot be changed easily. I certainly would know as my parents still don’t trust black people.

I have seen the light! Mr. Morrow has converted me. I used to hold the conservative view that there are a certain minimum collection of institutions and values that are central to the long term survival of a civilization, and the government must balance its non-intrusiveness against its imperative to promote those institutions and values to ensure the future of the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.

No, however, I see that nothing that government does has any real effect on the central ethos of our culture. Our most important values and institutions are defined and sustained outside of government, and even if government flatly contradicts our received values and the inherited definitions of our most cherished institutions, it really doesn’t matter, because we can just teach the contrary position within our own families and churches, so what’s the big deal?

Mr. Morrow gave the example of the Jews defining what is kosher. This was really persuasive, because I immediately realized that if the government were to go around stamping a kosher symbol on every single item of food, from hot dogs to pork chops to breads and fruits and vegetables, with all foods being treated equally, using taxpayer monies to do so, there would be no particular objection or outcry from the Jewish community. Instead, they would calmly and quietly teach, within their synagogues and families, that certain symbols are REALLY kosher and the government symbols are to be ignored.

Similarly, if the government makes certain public statements, perhaps in the form of mere non-binding resolutions in Congress, that attempt to change history, it would be no big deal. If such public official statements by our own government said that Native American Indians were 100% to blame for all conflicts they had with whites in the 19th century westward expansion, or that the Holocaust of the 1940s never happened, then those who believe otherwise are free to teach the contrary position, so who cares what government says?

I used to think that rarely-enforced or never-enforced state laws that prohibit adultery or sodomy were valuable because at least they made a certain public statement about what was accepted and not accepted in this society. Now that I realize that such statements by government have no effect on the general culture, I say get rid of them all. They are too judgmental, anyway.

Some of the readers of this post might think I am merely engaging in sarcasm. To dispel that notion, let me give a concrete proof of the truth of these statements, and also announce the books I plan to write in the near future on this subject. The concrete proof is this: When the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973, there were dire predictions made by its opponents. Obviously, they were wrong. Not only have abortion numbers been limited to the same quantity as the legal and illegal abortions performed each year before 1973, but there has been no change in public attitudes about related issues just because the official law suddenly sanctioned abortion. A public statement by the government that abortion was acceptable in this society did not change anyone’s mind about using abortion as rather routine contraception, nor did it cause anyone to view the severely handicapped, terminally ill, etc., any differently than before 1973. People have been free to teach whatever they wanted at church, and this has resulted in no change being effected in society’s attitudes about the sanctity of life in general.

Any doubts about the sincerity of my conversion will be dispelled when I release my books on the subject. The first will be philosophical and personal, to be called “Ideas Have No Consequences: A Traditional Conservative’s Personal Journey to Radical Libertarianism”. The second book will focus more on the policy implications, and will be called “A Modest Proposal: Towards the Removal of All Judgmental Restraints and Discriminations”. I will post the purchasing details here when I am finished, so that everyone can achieve the same degree of enlightenment.

The proposition that nothing can threaten marriage means nothing can threaten homosexual marriage; besides the proposition being false, it makes no sense to use the proposition to support homosexual marriage.

Homosexuals can have their ceremonies in which they purport to “marry.” But they can’t co-opt a traditional institution and expect everyone else to abandon their belief and agree to describe the ceremony as marriage, which has always been something only men and women do.

Marriage between men and women has always been the foundation of civilization. Julius Caesar, viewing what rampant debauchery and homosexuality were doing to Roman society, gave women incentives to marry. He did not give incentives to homosexuals. He knew what the result would be.

Homosexual culture is dysfunctional. So to expect reward for this dysfunctionality by the grant of a revered privilege is unrealistic.

Homosexual marriage is premised on the idea that marriage can be defined however one wants. If one can do that, then one can define marriage as something two heterosexual friends do or a man and a boy do or a man and an animal do. When this situation exists, marriage has no meaning.

Saying one is shifting an argument from religion to the Equal Protection Clause is false. Believing in some creed is a religious act. Moreover, shifting from discussing one premise to another premise is changing the subject.

When my boss tells me I am wasting time defending an obviously faulty weld, he isn’t implying that it is obvious that women and blacks should not have the right to vote.

Again one should be aware of poor arguments such as ad hominem argument. Examples of ad hominem arguments are expressions such as “jingoism,” “unthinking suicidal maniac,” and “silly.”

Calling for the abandonment of tradition and the acceptance of creeds that can be “changed easily” is nihilism.

“S” says I am “demonizing” Mr. Morrow when I describe his ideas as suicidal. Well, I have long described liberalism as a belief system that is inherently suicidal to any society that adopts it, and added that the society only avoids the suicide, for a while, by making lots of exceptions from its professed liberalism. Homosexual marriage is the ne plus ultra of liberalism. Mr. Morrow is a liberal who endorses homosexual marriage. My calling his ideas suicidal was not a personal attack on him but an attack on his ideas.

Mr. Murgos, Regarding your post of 10:10 AM: Do you mean to refer to Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew and, after several civil wars, successor, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, more famously known to history as Imperator Caesar Augustus? Augustus was famous for his efforts for moral and spiritual revival. I am not familiar with any such effort being undertaken by Julius Caesar.

Sorry Joshua, you’ve got me. I don’t know.

Mr. Coleman:

“This was really persuasive, because I immediately realized that if the government were to go around stamping a kosher symbol on every single item of food, from hot dogs to pork chops to breads and fruits and vegetables, with all foods being treated equally, using taxpayer monies to do so, there would be no particular objection or outcry from the Jewish community. Instead, they would calmly and quietly teach, within their synagogues and families, that certain symbols are REALLY kosher and the government symbols are to be ignored.”

The problem with this sarcastic statement is that for the government to do so would be a change in the function of government, which (correct me if I’m wrong) is specifically supposed to stay out of religious affairs. At issue here is the constitutional legality of homosexual marriage which, as I understand it, has been legally affirmed by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The question is not whether homosexual marriage is immoral, but rather whether it is guaranteed under the constitution. I have yet to see persuasive evidence that these freedoms are under fire for any reason other than religious (debates about the semantic use of “husband” and “wife” notwithstanding).

Re Aaron H.’s reply: If the government announces that it is using a secularized meaning of “kosher”, merely intending to approve the general safety and cleanness of foods without any focus on religious observance, would it be OK then?

Mr. Coleman: You bring up a good point, and to be honest, it would bother me if the government started labeling as “kosher” foods which were obviously not. However, this debate is about marriage, not Kashrut laws, and I was merely alluding to your example (not mine) to illustrate the point that this should not be a religious debate. “Kosher” is a strictly Jewish religious term, and has no place in government.

“Marriage,” on the other hand, is not exclusively a religious term, nor should it be. The government cannot use a “secularized” version of the word “marriage” because it already has a secular role in society, in addition to a religious one. The government recognizes marriages outside of religion—the union recognizes marriages performed by Justices of the Peace and military officers, does it not?

I made an analogy, knowing full well the pitfalls of analogical reasoning, to illustrate a point. One of the pitfalls of analogical reasoning is that the two things being analogized have both similarities and differences. If the similarities are germane to the point being made by the analogy while the differences are not, the analogy is sound. If there are overlooked differences that are actually crucial to the point being made, there is a flaw in the analogy.

A common logical flaw when responding to an analogy is to simply focus on the differences without consideration of the point that was being made. Of course there are differences between the two situations; there are always differences in analogized things.

The point I was raising was twofold: (1) Does it significantly affect the culture for government to stamp its public approval on something, or do people just ignore government and go on believing as they did before? (2) Do people have a right to be upset when the government publicly contradicts their beliefs on fundamental matters of life, forcing them to live in dissonance with their own political order?

In light of the point being made, the differences that you note are merely the peripheral differences to be expected from any analogy. In the kosher case, Jews would be upset to be forced to live in dissonance with the political order, and they would worry that the job of convincing everyone in their own community to maintain the old beliefs had just been made harder, and that kosher observance would gradually weaken over time because its significane had been diluted. Similarly, heterosexual traditionalists, who believe marriage is first and foremost for procreation and providing a stable environment for raising children and passing our civilization on to the next generation, not merely a declaration that two people love each other, would object to being forced (on yet another matter, I might add!) to live in dissonance with the established political order, and would worry that fighting to maintain the significance of an institution that has been diluted by government decree would be a gradually losing battle over time. Thus, the central points of the analogy hold between the two situations, and the differences are not relevant to those points.

One point that has not yet been raised is that homosexuality can be taught (and some experts say, so can heterosexuality). If one legitimizes homosexuality, it legitimizes the teaching of homosexuality. Religious people don’t want children and others being taught dysfunctional, sinful behavior. If homosexuality is as legitimate as heterosexuality, the promotion of homosexuality has no rational objection.

Building on what Mr. Murgos said, here’s a question to ask a gay rights proponent:

If you were trying to choose between sending your son to a school where there was a lot of homosexuality and many of the students became homosexual, and another school where that was not the case, which school would you choose?

If his answer is the non-homosexual school, ask him why.

If he says he would prefer that his own child not be homosexual, ask him why.

The point is to get him to admit that he himself prefers heterosexuality to homosexuality, and that this is not merely a personal preference or bias on his part, but that it reflects nature. Therefore for a society deliberately to promote homosexuality and increase the opportunities for it to grow and affect more people, is evil. And therefore it is right for people to oppose equal rights for homosexuality.

I haven’t heard of a case of homosexuality being taught to date yet. That’s really not evidence.
As for the nature argument, homosexuality is well documented in nature. I’d point you to a recent NYT article since it’s the latest one in a long series of articles on homosexuality in nature…since some people feel that it is not “natural.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/arts/07GAY.html

Quite honestly, a large myth spread by anti-gay groups is the unfounded fear of pedophilia, but the simple truth is that the majority of pedophiles are white heterosexual males. Pedophiles are pedophiles. Gays are gays. They are fundamentally different.

I see the argument as a large Catch-22. The evidence you wish to see largely can’t be provided in a society that forces people to be in the closet. I know not a single person who was “taught” homosexuality (and i would wager that I know a great deal more that are out of the closet than you), and would argue that you’d have a very difficult time proving that it can be taught. It is merely unfounded conjecture at this point when most real unbiased evidence I have seen is to the contrary.

As for teaching heterosexuality, most cases have resulted in gross failure. Remember the first guy that was touted as a convert? He ended up being sighted in a gay bar a couple years afterwards and was hounded out. Remember Michael Huffington? ex-Republican and ex-husband of Arianna Huffington? I’d say that social pressures are the ones that made people believe they can change from their very nature. I sincerely doubt you can convert a heterosexual male into a homosexual one (or vice versa), nor would I find it desirable to change what someone is when the end result can be more harmful.

As for P Murgos’ argument that ad hominem is poor argument, I am merely responding to hidden ad hominem attacks with more of them. I say what I mean and feel no need to pretend ad hominem attacks aren’t in a sentence that groups “homosexuals, pedophiles, and bestiality” together in the same sentence…despite the obvious consent issues that pedophilia and bestiality have. Nor do I call people “dysfunctional” for something that clearly exists in “nature” as you would have us believe it doesn’t. As for the argument about the Roman Empire, it really doesn’t hold water, so I’ll ignore that unless it’s substantiated.

I would also suggest that focusing on the Constitutionality of the issue (which is the courts’ job btw) is not shifting the argument so much as taking it to grounds that can’t be as subjective as “tradition” where basically feelings are being argued. Though I wouldn’t mind dispelling any myths if they are brought up.

Perhaps it is irrational fear of the unknown and ignorance about homosexuality and not “nature” as you would so loosely argue. (nature is a very very complex word in definition and quite honestly, I don’t see how it works in this case especially in light of the Scopes Monkey Trial…basically man wants to be separate from the beasts and yet looks to them for evidence? Besides, I already pointed out homosexuality/bisexuality exists in nature.)

(Now, if homosexuality is partially genetic (very likely), I don’t want to think of where the future is going with genetic engineering…)
I’d edit this post further, but it’s difficult to do so, and I’m on a time limit right now.

I see Mr. Auster removed the previous comments. But perhaps he will permit these counter-arguments.

“I haven’t heard of” and “I know not a single person” are not arguments; they are expressions of ignorance. They are also a call for proof instead of argument, and it changes the subject from the risk of harm to “prove it.” In addition, it is more difficult to “hear of” an occurrence that is being suppressed and closely guarded against. For example, because we haven’t heard of any 9/11’s for two years, the danger has not left. A refusal to acknowledge a danger is not argument.

Prisons and British boarding schools are loaded with learned homosexual behavior. Children and adolescents are notorious for experimenting. Encouraging and legitimizing experimentation will only heighten the risk.

(I don’t know enough about the issue of converting homosexuals to limit themselves to heterosexual behavior to discuss it. I certainly would not marry such a person, given my present ignorance.)

At one time we had heterosexual promiscuity not just locked in the closet but mostly eliminated. The extreme homosexual promiscuity already out of the closet and already rampant are a risk that one would not want to impose on parents, who are trying to prevent not only heterosexual behavior by their children but also learned homosexual behavior. Legitimizing homosexual culture adds to the problems of parents.

The argument that the majority of pedophiles are heterosexuals is another misleading argument. 95-97% of people are heterosexuals; one would expect the majority of pedophiles to be heterosexual.

Informed persons know that the pedophilia in the Catholic Church is a problem related to homosexuality. There are only a very small percentage of female pedophilia victims in the Catholic Church. But ignorance about this is understandable considering the anti-Catholic propaganda and sensationalism that surrounds the Church.

Dysfunctional is a legitimate term used in psychology. It is obvious to most that its use in this sentence is not an attempt at invective: “Religious people don’t want children and others being taught dysfunctional, sinful behavior.” On another point, using words in the same sentence is not calling people names. No one said homosexuals were bestialists. More subject changing. We are wasting time with the obvious.

When one speaks of homosexuality in nature, one is speaking about homosexuality in humans. Failure to point this out is more subject changing.

Traditions are long standing practices, not “feelings.”

Failure to address one argument and moving to another argument, such as the Constitutional, is changing the subject no matter how many times it is denied.

The Constitution is not a reliable document on which to base a moral argument. It is changed and ignored constantly, all depending on the composition of the courts.
“It doesn’t hold water” is not an argument.

“Focusing on the Constitutionality of the issue is the court’s job.” This is at best a misleading argument. Sure court’s focus on constitutional issues, but so does everyone else: the President, the Congress, and every citizen of the United States, all of whom appoint the court members. The court is not the final arbiter as this misleading argument asserts through implication. The people are the final arbiters

Rather than join the debate at this time, let me clarify some of the issues.

Part of the question here is how one defines homosexuality.
Are we referring to the behavior of having homosexual sex or to the preference for homosexual sex?
I think that it is quite clear that homosexual sex can be a learned behavior, just look at prisons, or at all-boys boarding schools. Moreover, as I recall, something like 11 out of 12 of the last Roman Emperors had homosexual encounters. It is unlikely that they were all “born that way,” as people who appear to be innately homosexual make up 1-3% of the population.
That homosexual sex can be a learned behavior does not necessarily mean that it is a learned behavior in all cases.
Part of the question here is whether, even if some people are innately gay, prohibitions on homosexual behavior prevent experimentation by people who are not innately gay or whether it can steer people who are bisexual or somewhere else in between toward the heterosexual side of their nature.

Are we referring only to one’s adult liaisons or to all sexual encounters?
Does the sexual orientation of a pedophile in adult encounters affect their preferred molestational sex? (e.g. assuming “homosexuality” to refer specifically to one’s preference in adult relationships, would a male homosexual pedophile be more likely to target little boys while a heterosexual one would be more likely to target little girls?)
What about ephebophilia (molesting adolescents)? If there is little correlation between a pedophile’s “adult preference” and their “molestational preference,” it seems likely that there would be more correlation with the preference with people who are sexually mature but not yet considered adults.

Finally, we need statistics on the proportion of homosexuals who molest vs. hetereosexuals who molest.

Thank you Michael for clarifying the point on the definition of homosexuality.
I’ve been using the definition where homosexuality means having an innate preference for the same gender…and not “homosexual behavior” as “homosexual behavior” can be learned in environments such as prison…however studies have shown that those who engage in homosexual behavior in prison return to heterosexual sex once released from prison. It is learned behavior in so far as inmates cannot get sex otherwise…also it is part of the power structure in prisons.

As for the argument about being homosexuality (in the sense of innate preference) being “dysfunctional,” the APA (American Psychiatric Association) no longer considers
it dysfunctional, but even says that trying to change homosexuality to heterosexuality is more harmful than helpful.

“Informed persons know that the pedophilia in the Catholic Church is a problem related to homosexuality. “
Now, my point about pedophilia is that pedophilia is a disorder in which adult consent simply cannot happen. The same goes with bestiality. Pedophilia and bestiality simply is not relevant to the discussion of homosexuality (between consenting adults) as the latter two are dysfunctional in psychology . To use those two terms in conjunction with homosexuality is to mischaracterize homosexuality no matter how much you wish to deny it. Though I did not bring up the Catholic Church (who are defending pedophiles btw) I will say that pedophilia is distinctly a problem related to pedophilia and not homosexuality.

The whole point behind state-recognized unions of gay/lesbian couples is to provide financial stability to relationships, and also provides another reason to work problems out in the relationship. Having that, some of the problems you’ve described such as “promiscuity” can be lessened (though with birth control, heterosexual promiscuity before marriage and often after can be just as bad).
There’s no evidence to prove that civil unions have done anything to harm to heterosexual couples in any nation yet, nor is it possible to correlate a rise in births out of wedlock on more than circumstantial evidence.

Considering the high rate of adultery and divorce in heterosexual marriages, I think work is better spent on these than on a Constitutional amendment policing a minority. Last time there was an amendment (Prohibition) attempting to police morality, it resulted in abject failure…and perhaps made the situation worse. Even then, Prohibition had a clear purpose on a fiscal level where as prohibiting gay marriage does not.

“At one time we had heterosexual promiscuity not just locked in the closet but mostly eliminated.”
It’s pretty hard to substantiate that heterosexual promiscuity was eliminated at any point in American history. Like your point about 9/11-like events, just because it was spoken about does not mean it didn’t happen. Silence about a topic does not equate its nonexistence.

As for experimenting in adolescence to determine sexuality, it seems pretty obvious to me that all people go through some soul searching in adolescence, and experimenting with homosexual behavior in youth (more common than people would like it known) does not equate homosexuality.

“When one speaks of homosexuality in nature, one is speaking about homosexuality in humans.”
Explain how this is subject changing? Perhaps I don’t understand what your definition of nature is (as I said earlier, nature has a very complex definition). Are humans and “nature” easily separated? “In nature” is an extremely loaded phrase that can be used according to the various definitions and connotations of the word “nature.” I don’t think it is a waste of time for me to argue that homosexuality can exist in humans by nature.

“The Constitution is not a reliable document on which to base a moral argument.”
At the core of our disagreement lies in our belief in whether there should be separation of church and state. Just a note here.
I would also go so far as to state that mob rule is not just rule and that the Constitution was specifically designed to avoid the federal government interfering with the practice of religion. As such, marriage licenses are a right granted unto the population in a secular manner. This does not inhibit or prevent churches from practicing their own beliefs. I recall a phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” from some unknown historical document (cough) and don’t see how a Constitutional amendment prevent gay marriage would not be counter to this founding principle nor do I see gay marriage preventing anyone from having access to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is getting longer than I wish it to be so I’ll stop for now.

Thank you Michael for clarifying the point on the definition of homosexuality.
I’ve been using the definition where homosexuality means having an innate preference for the same gender…and not “homosexual behavior” as “homosexual behavior” can be learned in environments such as prison…however studies have shown that those who engage in homosexual behavior in prison return to heterosexual sex once released from prison. It is learned behavior in so far as inmates cannot get sex otherwise…also it is part of the power structure in prisons.

As for the argument about being homosexuality (in the sense of innate preference) being “dysfunctional,” the APA (American Psychiatric Association) no longer considers
it dysfunctional, but even says that trying to change homosexuality to heterosexuality is more harmful than helpful.

“Informed persons know that the pedophilia in the Catholic Church is a problem related to homosexuality. “
Now, my point about pedophilia is that pedophilia is a disorder in which adult consent simply cannot happen. The same goes with bestiality. Pedophilia and bestiality simply is not relevant to the discussion of homosexuality (between consenting adults) as the latter two are dysfunctional in psychology . To use those two terms in conjunction with homosexuality is to mischaracterize homosexuality no matter how much you wish to deny it. Though I did not bring up the Catholic Church (who are defending pedophiles btw) I will say that pedophilia is distinctly a problem related to pedophilia and not homosexuality.

The whole point behind state-recognized unions of gay/lesbian couples is to provide financial stability to relationships, and also provides another reason to work problems out in the relationship. Having that, some of the problems you’ve described such as “promiscuity” can be lessened (though with birth control, heterosexual promiscuity before marriage and often after can be just as bad).
There’s no evidence to prove that civil unions have done anything to harm to heterosexual couples in any nation yet, nor is it possible to correlate a rise in births out of wedlock on more than circumstantial evidence.

Considering the high rate of adultery and divorce in heterosexual marriages, I think work is better spent on these than on a Constitutional amendment policing a minority. Last time there was an amendment (Prohibition) attempting to police morality, it resulted in abject failure…and perhaps made the situation worse. Even then, Prohibition had a clear purpose on a fiscal level where as prohibiting gay marriage does not.

“At one time we had heterosexual promiscuity not just locked in the closet but mostly eliminated.”
It’s pretty hard to substantiate that heterosexual promiscuity was eliminated at any point in American history. Like your point about 9/11-like events, just because it was spoken about does not mean it didn’t happen. Silence about a topic does not equate its nonexistence.

As for experimenting in adolescence to determine sexuality, it seems pretty obvious to me that all people go through some soul searching in adolescence, and experimenting with homosexual behavior in youth (more common than people would like it known) does not equate homosexuality.

“When one speaks of homosexuality in nature, one is speaking about homosexuality in humans.”
Explain how this is subject changing? Perhaps I don’t understand what your definition of nature is (as I said earlier, nature has a very complex definition). Are humans and “nature” easily separated? “In nature” is an extremely loaded phrase that can be used according to the various definitions and connotations of the word “nature.” I don’t think it is a waste of time for me to argue that homosexuality can exist in humans by nature.

“The Constitution is not a reliable document on which to base a moral argument.”
At the core of our disagreement lies in our belief in whether there should be separation of church and state. Just a note here.
I would also go so far as to state that mob rule is not just rule and that the Constitution was specifically designed to avoid the federal government interfering with the practice of religion. As such, marriage licenses are a right granted unto the population in a secular manner. This does not inhibit or prevent churches from practicing their own beliefs. I recall a phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” from some unknown historical document (cough) and don’t see how a Constitutional amendment prevent gay marriage would not be counter to this founding principle nor do I see gay marriage preventing anyone from having access to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is getting longer than I wish it to be so I’ll stop for now.

There is a significant point of misconception concerning what is “natural”. Rather than engage in a lengthy rebuttal, let me just propose that the word “dysfunctional” be used instead. Many things are “natural” in that they occur in nature, such as disease, violent killings, selfish behavior, and even cannibalism in scavenger animals. So what?

The sad truth is that gay men are less happy, more likely to be depressed, more likely to be suicidal, more likely to abuse drugs, etc., than heterosexual men. Gay advocates try to blame these things on their rejection by society; all relative gay unhappiness would disappear if the rest of us were just more “tolerant” (this is the liberal shibboleth that has nothing to do with tolerance, of course; it actually means going beyond tolerance to acceptance, and then beyond acceptance to the ultimate desired destination, outright approval).

Unfortunately for that thesis, surveys of gay men in environments that go well beyond mere tolerance, such as Amsterdam and San Francisco, reveal the same problems with gay men and their pathologies. The members of the APA (American Psychiatric Association) were well aware of the unhappiness of their gay patients, and the story is well documented that they removed homosexuality from the list of pathological conditions only under intense political pressure from gays, including gays within their midst. It had nothing to do with science of any sort.

Yes, homosexuality is “natural”, as natural as cannibalism if we take our cue from the animal kingdom, or as natural as cystic fibrosis, which humans inherit all the time. It is also dysfunctional.

Gays aren’t happier (subjective anyway as psychology isn’t really a hard science) than heterosexuals in Amsterdamn and SF, but the counter is that they didn’t grow up with tolerance and acceptance. Gays simply aren’t far enough removed from demanding equal rights to determine whether marriage has affected their happiness level (as if happiness was a measure of constitutional rights?).

Relationships are what you make of them, and doing a comparative study of happiness in heterosexual relationships is potentially revealing as well here. If I can find some studies on both, I’ll post them up.

No privileges have ever guaranteed happiness nor does happiness nor perceived “dysfunction” deny people equal protection. The reasoning behind your contention that gays in SF and Amsterdam are unhappier does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it’s dysfunction at work. It’d certainly be hard to make a case that the generation that has fought for acceptance will immediately be happier in so short a time after bearing a large amount of abuse for most of their lives.

The argument that “all relative gay unhappiness would disappear” with societal acceptance certainly is overly broad, but it is progression in a direction that can lead towards happiness for a significant voting population. My biggest objections are whether the federal government is overstepping its bounds with a constitutional amendment and whether the courts have overstepped their bounds in judicial review. I’d like to believe that the courts aren’t overstepping their bounds when declaring that “separate but equal” leads to second-class citizenship.

The civil rights movement did not take one generation nor do I know yet whether it was completely successful. Likewise, any movement for equal rights is so easily summarized or compacted into a few short years.

Unfortunately the only way I see out of this impasse is time. Perhaps we can look again in another generation if gay marriage passes, and maybe we’ll see if it really has the consequences traditionalists fear.

This is why I tried to get away from the moral argument and back to original posts on judicial review and equal protection earlier on this page as it inevitably leads to a fundamental disagreement on “what is homosexuality?” which I doubt either side will agree on as the tradionalist judeo-christian view takes their opinion of homosexuality from the bible, and I have no wish to get into Leviticus as I’m reasonably certain other people have read the passages and found them wanting or reaffirming.

“Any abnormality or impairment of function.” is the OED definition of dysfunction…..overly broad if you ask me….
I was arguing about the definition of “natural” as there was no clear use, and there are many different ways of interpreting “nature” to the desires of the argument. I would contend that the definition of “dysfunction” is also overly broad according to the Oxford English Dictionary unless contained to certain bounds. However, I disagree that homosexuality is a dysfunction as in itself, it does not actually impair function nor is it abnormal historically speaking.

I really enjoyed the early posts on judicial review and whether the MA courts are within their legal bounds…some of the very early arguments in this blog intrigue me.

I don’t have the time to address all the arguments we have heard, so I’ll start with the first from one of the lists. First it was proposed that homosexuality can be learned and that that this poses a risk to parents trying to protect their children from the dysfunctional homosexual culture. The commonsensical proposition that homosexuality can be learned was not accepted and there was the call for proof. When proof was shown, it was not denied and the argument was complete. But then occurred a change in subject to some supposed study (which one can find to support nearly any proposition one chooses). Ignored was the risk to children as was the additional evidence of boarding schools. This is not a discussion; one party is simply talking over the other, as is done on the useless TV Firing-Line-type entertainment shows.

One can also note here a defining aspect of liberalism; all ideas, except liberal ideas, must be based on an endless series of rationalizations, which in most cases is impossible, a morass. They are like children that keep asking everyone but themselves why? The whys have no end. Which is one reason one of the foremost 20th Century philosophers, Wittgenstein, believed philosophers needed to be healed from the disease of philosophy.

The main point for traditionalists to remember after the word salads above is that common sense reveals homosexual culture as extremely dysfunctional, homosexuality is immoral and sinful, and homosexuality has traditionally been suppressed in all civilizations. These are not liberal or rational arguments to a liberal, therefore, they are illegitimate to liberals. In addition, the arguments are intolerable to the so-called liberal tolerance.

Good argument by Mr. Coleman. Natural, but disfunctional. Just as disease is natural, but represents a breakdown of the system.

I share Mr. Murgos’s concern about word salads. I ask people to keep their posts within a reasonable length. If they’re shorter, people are more likely to read them. If they go on and on, one’s eyes tend to glaze over them.

Mr. Auster wrote:
“I never agreed with him on sex for reproduction only, if that was what he said.”

I seem to have missed an entire thread in which I was mentioned.

It isn’t that the only legitimate purpose of sex is procreation. It is that legitimate sex includes procreation as one of its teleological ends. That is not to say that a married couple must have procreation as a primary proximate purpose for engaging in every sexual act, since the purpose (or more accurately the teleological end) inheres in the act itself, not in the motives of the individual agents. Where an individual agent can do wrong is in _deliberately thwarting_ that teleological end while extracting other benefits from the act.

While it’s all well and good that Joshua’s dictionary defines marriage in terms of a man and woman, I took the liberty of consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, which, in its newest edition, now says: “The condition of being a husband or wife; the relation between persons married to each other; matrimony. The term is now sometimes used with reference to long-term relationships between partners of the same sex.” Merriam-Webster similarly acknowledges the term.

So I think there’s something rather odd about making the argument that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, when two respected dictionaries demonstrate the exact opposite.

I would be curious to learn Matt’s take on the pope’s positive view on ‘natural family planning.’

I’m going to reply to Mr. Sandifer by violating the folkway against cross-posting and restating a point I made on another thread:

“The deadly march of liberalism involves an attack even on the meaning and application of words themselves. The modern ‘education’ system attempts to move away from Noah Webster’s classical definition of a word as having a fixed and precise meaning toward a view of words as being relative in their meaning and open to interpretation. There is then a battle over how we even understand the most fundamental units of communication, and THIS is a battle we dare not lose.”

A similar observation was made by a man named Orwell.

What Mr. Sandifer has informed us is that even the meaning of words themselves is being wrested and perverted. Concepts have a great dependence on the words that express them, so control of the language underlies control of the thoughts and the discussions that proceed from them. “Marriage” has meant the union of man and woman since time immemorial. This latest attempt to assign a novel meaning to the word does nothing to bolster any argument beyond demonstrating how thorough the assault on our moral and cultural traditions has become.

Please tell us, Mr. Sandifer. If homophobia began to be treated as murder and people found guilty of homophobia began to be tried for murder and executed, and if the OED were taken over by a cohort of Queer Theorists who in the next edition of the OED defined homophobia as “murder,” would that mean that homophobia was in fact murder?

The willingness of Mr. Sandifer to take a very recent redefinition of the word marriage which is itself a result of the current gay rights movement, and to use that redefiniton as “proof” that marriage really does mean a union of two people of the same sex, shows either a total inability to think or a total lack of intellectual conscience.

If that statement seems like an ad hominem, it was meant to be. There are certain statements that fall so far outside the realm of common reason that the people making them are not deserving of respect.

I was just dealing on another page with yet another person who feels words can mean whatever he wants them to mean:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001045.html#13855

You do, of course, realize that the meanings of words do change over time? I mean, you can’t just fix language at a given point. Yes, for thousands of years marriage has been between a man and a woman. For thousands of years, slavery was also acceptable. And for thousands of years, we had no electricity. The simple fact that it is old does not mean it is right - if the old answers were always the right ones, we wouldn’t need blogs and discussions and arguments. Everything would already be settled, as it has been since the dawn of civilization.

Of course moral and cultural traditions are under attack. There’s never been a time in history when they haven’t been under attack. And they should be under attack - we should be constantly questioning and interrogating our assumptions and beliefs, so as to constantly test them, and to improve them. If they’re good ideas, they’ll survive the attack. If they’re bad ideas, they won’t.

If I don’t question and interrogate my beliefs, how am I going to insure that they’re right?

I’m not sure I see how Mr. Auster is pulling off this rhetorical sleight of hand. One minute, marriage should be between a man and a woman because that’s what marriage is. The next moment, once dictionaries actually come into play, suddenly this argument comes off the table? If I shouldn’t turn to a dictionary to learn what a word means, where should I turn? Isn’t that what they’re for?

As for the hypothetical takeover of the OED by Queer Theorists, as amusing as the thought is, the fact remains that the OED has not, in fact, been taken over by a raging horde of Queer Theorists, rendering the whole exercise of determining what to do if it were little more than an amusing distraction.

What a liar Mr. Sandifer is. Here is what he originally wrote:

“So I think there’s something rather odd about making the argument that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, when two respected dictionaries demonstrate the exact opposite.”

In this statement, he’s not saying, “Oh, by the way, the definition of marriage just changed the day before yesterday, and we ought to consider adopting this new definition.” No, he’s acting as if this brand new definition DISPROVES the conservative argument that marriage has always been defined as a man and a woman, indeed, that it makes that argument seem “odd.” But now that he’s been called out on that statement, he comes back and adopts this whole different argument that homosexual marriage is part of the flow of constant change and that we need to adjust ourselves to that constant change.

So, which is it, Mr. Sandifer? Has the definition of marriage always included same-sex couples? Or is that a radical innovation that just appeared in the last couple of years that the innovators are trying to force on the rest of us?

And if they are trying to force it on the rest of us, then it’s not part of some natural historical evolution of our civilization, but something disruptive being forced on it from without.

As for Mr. Sandifer’s evocation of constant change as the only standard to follow, if a bunch of the white racists who inhabit liberal fantasies took over America tomorrow and subjected blacks to slavery and expelled all immigrants and put all women in the kitchen, would you say that this is just part of the continual flow of change that makes up human history? If you wouldn’t say that, then your appeal to historical change as your standard is a lie. The truth is that you don’t believe in ANY change for the sake of change. You just use the “change” argument to justify the things that YOU want to justify.

Mr. LeFevre wrote:
“I would be curious to learn Matt’s take on the pope’s positive view on ‘natural family planning.’”

It is a big topic, but perhaps I can put a stake in the ground at one end of it, hopefully without being outrageously verbose.

Sexual acts are inherently good. So sexual sin involves the corruption of an act that is inherently good; an attempt to extract some goods inherent to the act while deliberately thwarting the (or one of the) teleological end(s) of the act.

There is a fundamental deontological difference between 1) doing something that would normally be good in a corrupt manner and 2) not doing anything at all. It isn’t a maximization problem in which procreation-qua-procreation is a general good that must be maximized (if it were, the command from the chair would be ‘copulate continuously without rest’); no, it is a question of whether or not actual acts which actually take place are licit.

That is why abstinence is a way (on this understanding) to avoid sexual sin. You can’t corrupt a hypothetical act that doesn’t take place: you can only corrupt an actual act that actually does take place.

Now there is some debate among more traditional Catholics over NFP. The most that can be taken from authoritative magisterial documents, it seems to me, is that it _may_ be licit under _grave or serious_ circumstances. For example, Pope Pius XII had this to say about the licitness of “rhythm” methods:

“…If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles.” (from his Letter to Midwives)

Other relevant authoritative documents are _Castii Connubi_ and _Humanae Vitae_. Consistently these documents say (on my reading) that artificial contraception is always illicit and that deliberately-timed periodic abstinence _may_ be licit under serious or grave circumstances. I am not aware of any reason why extended abstinence, not of the have-your-sex-but-no-children rhythm variety, would be a moral problem; or if it would it would have to be so under a wholly separate principle.

I suppose the notion here is that even just the timing of an act, consciously done in order to avoid fecundity while enjoying the other benefits, might corrupt that specific act even though the act wouldn’t be fertile anyway had it taken place without considering the fertility cycle. In a similar manner deliberately timing acts of friendship for “fair weather” can, unless there is a grave reason to do so, cast a pall over acts of friendship that do take place. Better to not be a friend at all than to be a fair weather friend.

But the key to unlocking the puzzle of why contracepted sex acts are bad whereas abstinence is not bad is to recognize that sex acts are naturally and normally good. Once it is recognized that sex acts are natually and normally good it becomes clear that in order to sin sexually one has to do something that corrupts or disorders an actual sex act that actually takes place.

Jim Kalb made an interesting observation with which I firmly agree, no doubt in part because of my bias as a Catholic. There is no requirement for revelation-qua-revelation in order to come to know the truth about human sexuality. Rather it is an area of natural law accessible to us all through ordinary reason and experience. So it isn’t that we ought to believe that contraception and sodomy are wrong because the Catholic Church says so. It is that we ought to recognize that the Catholic Church, in the form of aging celibate effeminate progressive Pope Paul VI writing in the middle of the sexual revolution, is the only voice that has affirmed what all Christians agreed was the natural law little more than a century ago. The Catholic Church is the only major institution left standing that proclaims the truth - the natural truth - about human sexuality.

Mr. Sandifer wrote:
“You do, of course, realize that the meanings of words do change over time?”

Did someone invite the nominalists while I wasn’t watching?

Long posts are inevitable if I’m the only one responding from another point of view…I’ll try to keep this one shorter.
Sorry about the double post earlier…my browser must’ve somehow sent twice..thanks for fixing it Mr. Auster.

I never said I was a liberal, but someone made an assumption and acted upon it.
I merely wished to dispel myths that are frequently used to attack homosexuality.
For every argument I knock down though, another appears in its place or another “rationalization” (a term i’m using very loosely after Mr. Murgos’ post)

However, I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that generalizations about liberals are not “common sense” and “obvious” to everyone.
You cannot claim something is “common sense” or “obvious” if it is not shared. I’ve never thought homosexuality being evil was common sense or obvious, so it is not that I refuse to accept your “argument,” but refuse to believe your opinion on an issue.

You have not given me a convincing argument that children are in any danger other than to say that they can be “taught” homosexuality, to which I responded by distinguishing between innate homosexuality and homosexual behavior according to Mr. Michael Jose.
You accuse “liberals” of “rationalizing” too much, but you are simplifying the issue too much with paragraphs of right wing propaganda. And my attempts to bring the issue back to constitutionality have failed as you wish to argue on grounds of morality, where neither side will likely agree to the satisfaction of the other party.

You’ve refused to see my stance from a broader perspective while I’ve tried to understand, but you have not substantiated in any manner that homosexuality is “evil” in itself and therefore, it is not an argument, but an opinion that you have. It is my opinion that humanity can thrive and adapt given any situation on Earth and that while I value certain aspects of traditionalist views highly (such as monogamy and other such views), I don’t agree that homosexuality can be dysfunctional except by the definition of “traditional” judeo-christian values.

Rather than an argument on merits, some posts have turned this into a trash talk session against “liberals” that they lack rationality or tolerance of other ideas. Oddly enough, I’m on this board and being irrationally accused of being a liberal when overall, I am not.
While I can accuse liberal boards of doing the same to conservatives, I’m merely pointing out the “obvious” here that there are more than two groups (conservative and liberal) at work on the issue.

In response to Mr. Coleman’s post on “nature”.

Natural also can mean not using birth control. Perhaps we should ignore the concerns of overpopulation or try to use the ineffective rhythm method. Can nature be dysfunctional at all if we use a broader definition of the word “nature?” The reason I brought up the definition of the word nature is that it used in so many different contexts that it can be used to argue any arbitrary viewpoint. In the word “nature,” we see an evolution of meaning over time.

S. wrote:
“You cannot claim something is “common sense” or “obvious” if it is not shared.”

And also:
“In the word “nature,” we see an evolution of meaning over time.”

Mr. Auster, really now, it has been too long since you last had the place fumigated for nominalism.

Matt, you are VFR’s resident expert on nominalism. Fumigate away!

Well, it is just that I don’t see any real point in talking to nominalists. To nominalists words are just convenient labels we negotiate and assign to things rather than pointers to objects, concepts, and truths which transcend the names we give them. So S. and Mr. Sandifer probably really think they are actually saying something rational as they negotiate labels in their preferred direction: “marriage” and “natural” are just arbitrary names we negotiate, they don’t refer to anything objective and independent of the labels. The names make the reality, they don’t refer to it.

In my experience there is little point in talking to nominalists, especially hostile ones. They don’t think it is a lie to coopt the name “marriage” and pretend that vowed homosexual buggery ontologically *is* marriage; they don’t think the name “marriage” refers to anything other than whatever meaning we manage to negotiate in a competition of wills. Nominalism quickly degenerates into postmodern subjectivism, and discussions with nominalists are meaningless shell-games with words as the nominalist attempts to construct an underlying ontology in an assertion of the will through the power of naming.

In the end, the arguer with the strongest will wins. But wins what? An empty husk of formalisms pointing to nothing; names utterly divorced from Being. In attempting to climb the tower to Heaven to be like God they end up unable to speak at all, drowned in a sea of Babel.

Thanks to Matt for the reply. My first thought was that his reasoning sounded disturbingly analogous to that of Cardinal Danneels, (reportedly a leading candidate for pope no less,) when he came out in favor of condom use so long as the _intent_ was to prevent the spread of HIV and not birth control.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/13/1073877833209.html

Seriously though, I wouldn’t categorically disregard Matt’s position as having no validity. It’s at least a baseline for considering a very complex question. For the record, I do have problems with artificial contraception — though obviously not with quite the fervency that Matt has. ;-) (I am not even considering the pill in this context, as it is an abortifacient and should be banned from the planet.)

I will only say that I am not entirely persuaded by the argument, even conceding some merit to it. Once it becomes clear that there are rhythmic patterns during which the chance of fertility is neglible, then this has to be included in consideration of the teleodeontoalkeahol whateveritis. And that period becomes by fact of nature, (to make a similar appeal as Matt,) a period of time when sexual congress can be enjoyed without effecting pregnancy. That cycle is part of the whole equation. And it is also true (citing my wife as authority) that a woman eventually develops a ‘sixth sense’ for her own ‘rhythm,’ the awareness of which is always present.

To put it another way, NFP is also used by couples who are actively _trying_ to conceive a child, abstaining _except_ for those period to maximize the chance of pregnancy — which is quite effective in fertile couples. I don’t see any equivalent moral distinction to be made between the one example or the other. Either way you’re taking something into your own hands in a sense, and it would seem absurd to suggest that a couple must make a point, (where abstinence has been precluded as an option,) to engage in sexual relations at such interval to ensure that both cycles are ‘covered’ — or to leave it to ‘randomity.’ Or to suggest that this instinctive knowledge of a perfectly natural phenomenon represents something upon which no conscious decision among a couple could be based.

Aside from these points, there seems to exist little Scriptural basis for a position against NFP. (And I will say up front that I find the cyclic prohibitions of the Mosaic Law of no guidance here, regarding it in the same category as the dietary laws.) To the contrary, the relevant passages would tend move from a neutrality AWAY from an anti-NFP position. But as I stated tersely above, I’m not sure that this is of any real consequence from where Matt is coming from, though I am open to further enlightenment on that matter if it were of consequence. :-)

As a hint, for S. and Mr. Sandifer to renounce nominalism and argue forthrightly as philosophical realists, they could restart the discussion with the following premise:

“I [N] think it would be good to abolish marriage and replace it with something else; lets name it buggerage. The institution of marriage will be completely gone, and the new buggerage will be more inclusive and better than that fusty old marriage that it replaces in such and such a way…” etc. etc.

I doubt our interlocutors will agree to that sort of construction though; not because they are deliberately dishonest, but because they are nominalists.

Thanks to Mr. LeFevre for the follow-up comments. In Catholic circles there are groups that tend to treat NFP as “Catholic birth control”. I am leery of those groups for reasons already stated, but I acknowledge Mr. LeFevre’s points as well and I don’t have a definitive general theory to offer on the licitness of NFP from a reasoned-out natural law perspective. Certainly periodic abstinence is in a different category from acts which are corrupted directly in their execution, as with artificial contraception - but I do worry about the fair-weather friend.

Mr. Auster - that would all be well and good, if that were what I was saying at all. However, I am not arguing that the simple fact that things change makes all change good. I’m saying that oldness and newness are not in and of themselves reasonable arguments.

Merriam-Webster and the OED are both respected dictionaries, compiled by respected lexographers. They show that the current social definition of marriage is not strictly between a man and a woman. So apparently things are changing. Change is not innately bad. (Nor innately good, but that’s beside the point.)

As for being a nominalist… what’s the alternative? Speaking only in Old English, because I refuse to accept linguistic change?

And, just to make sure, because it seems misunderstanding of posts is a frequent enough problem here, I am not saying that I am a nominalist - I’m just asking how strict a dichotemy you want to draw in linguistic positions here.

Mr. Auster’s advanced guidance on things such as dishonesty and Matt’s advanced guidance on things such as nominalism are what maintains this site’s honesty and quality. They prevent a degeneration into an intellectual Jerry Springer show. (I meant to say CrossFire-type-show above when I said Firing-Line-type, which was an honest but boring TV show.)

If the large numbers of talking-at-the-same-time TV shows is any indication, I suspect many that wander in and out of here do so mainly for stimulation and escapism, without any shame for their dishonesty, respect for their victims, or desire to be serious.

Classic nominalism for onlookers: You cannot claim something is “common sense” or “obvious” if it is not shared.

Nominalists always say that they are being misunderstood. This is because, being nominalists, they deny that there is any underlying essence to their own positions. For the nominalist, each position he takes on any given issue stands by itself, has no relationship to anything else he believes. So, if a critic points out to him that his position on issue X is indicative of a larger worldview called, say, “liberalism,” the nominalist will protest that.

As Matt wrote, “To nominalists words are just convenient labels we negotiate and assign to things rather than pointers to objects, concepts, and truths which transcend the names we give them.” By the same token, the nominalist denies that his own positions, such as his belief that words can mean whatever we want them to mean, point to a larger concept called nominalism.

Mr. Sandifer writes:

“Merriam-Webster and the OED are both respected dictionaries, compiled by respected lexographers. They show that the current social definition of marriage is not strictly between a man and a woman.”

He still hasn’t resolved the contradiction. Does the OED’s new definition of marriage reflect something real we are obliged to respect, or is it something cooked up just yesterday by obviously politically motivated lexographers who are not reflecting the actual and historic meaning of the word, but who are merely reflecting the gay rights movement’s demand for this new type of marriage? Since at the time those dictionaries were published, there was no homosexual marriage anywhere in the world (it was only a proposal and a demand, not an actuality), how can Mr. Sandifer say that it’s a genuine definition?

finally, Mr. Sandifer writes:

“However, I am not arguing that the simple fact that things change makes all change good. I’m saying that oldness and newness are not in and of themselves reasonable arguments.”

But I have already pointed out the same thing about him myself, when I wrote:

“The truth is that you don’t believe in ANY change for the sake of change. You just use the ‘change’ argument to justify the things that YOU want to justify.”

Mr. Sandifer wrote:
“As for being a nominalist… what’s the alternative?”

There are many; but I already mentioned the one with the most intellectual integrity, which would be to re-start the discussion by adopting the following premise, which accurately represents the ontology beneath Mr. Sandifer’s words:

“I [N] think it would be good to abolish marriage and replace it with something else; lets name it buggerage. The institution of marriage will be completely gone, and the new buggerage will be more inclusive and better than that fusty old marriage that it replaces in such and such a way…” etc. etc.

By adopting this premise we would move past the attempts to win an argument by redefinition of terms, and toward an argument over the actual different positions advocated.

The argument-from-authority “the recent crop of lexicographers agree with me” is transparently nominalist. The fact that some recent lexicographers agree with one lends support to the proposition that one is not alone in his intellectual sandbox, but it supports little else. If a central point had been made then the fact that experts exist who agree might be construed as mildly supportive of that central point. But the central point has to be made first: “I am right because Bob and Harry lexocographer define the term the way I do” isn’t an argument, it is an bare assertion resting on the authority of Bob and Harry - not their ontological authority over marriage-qua-marriage mind you, but their putative authority to label and re-label things for use in everyday language.

So Mr. Sandifer has cast his gaze about the modern world and found two more nominalists like himself. Big surprise there.

Nominalists are clever and perhaps are using their cleverness to manipulate rather than to discuss. The dishonesty is so natural it has become unconscious.

To expand on what Matt said, liberals use the same kind of argument all the time. For example, instead of saying, “I think that America should change itself into a multicultural country that includes equally all the cultures of the world; I know this represents a radical change from everything America has ever been, but in my opinion that’s what we ought to do,” they say, “America has ALWAYS been a multicultural country that is open to all cultures, that’s what makes America what it is.” The second formulation treats as an established, irresistible fact what is actually the position that they themselves are contending for. The purpose is to hamstring and silence any disagreement with their own position.

And that is what Mr. Sandifer has done here. Based on two dictionaries which Orwell-like have changed the meaning of marriage, he would have the rest of us believe that there IS NO DEBATE ABOUT HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE TO BE HAD. The debate has ALREADY been settled—by these two dictionaries. So there’s nothing left for the opponents of homosexual marriage to say. We just have to surrender to an established fact.

Liberals, leftists, nominalists, jack-booted thugs—they’re all the same.

A comment makes me suspicious I was not being a careful writer with an important point when I said, “The main point for traditionalists to remember after the word salads above is that common sense reveals homosexual culture as extremely dysfunctional, homosexuality is immoral and sinful, and homosexuality has traditionally been suppressed in all civilizations.” “Common sense” referred only to “reveals homosexual culture as extremely dysfunctional.”

The least I can do when trying to contribute to this advanced site with my limited abilities is to strive hard towards Williams Safire’s goal of being skilled in careful writing, that is, careful with syntax, diction, and usage.

I don’t think it is fair to imply that nominalists lie in the usual sense of intended falsehood. I don’t think your everyday nominalist even knows what a nominalist is; and I don’t think he realizes that his philosophical presuppositions reduce discourse to a pure dialectical contest of wills.

Of course just because a given nominalist is not aware of the implications of his philosophy, or even of the fact that he has a philosophy, that does not imply that he isn’t a nominalist. Most of the categories to which we belong are not reducable to pure self-conscious choices.

Yes, I obviously don’t mean to say that liberals and nominalists are literally jack-booted thugs. The thugs employ physical intimidation aimed at getting what they want. But the liberals and nominalists, whether they’re aware of it or not, use verbal intimidation to get what they want. Thus the liberals casually tell people, “Oh, by the way, the whole civilization that you thought has existed for the last several hundred or thousand years is actually the OPPOSITE of what you and everyone else thought it was. We’re not a country based on rule of law and individual rights and nationhood and marriage between men and women. We’re a country based on social justice and group rights and multiculturalism and marriage between men and men. This is the reality, so just accept it and shut up.” No physical violence is being used. It is a form of verbal coercion aimed at silencing all resistance to the leftist agenda.

When people use techniques like that, I do not believe in just replying politely to their argument, as though the argument were an honest or legitimate one. The argument is a device aimed at silencing discussion, and it should be identified as such.

Well, OK, fine, but I’m continuing to want an alternative here - preferably one that doesn’t involve assigning random viewpoints to me and then arguing against them.

I mean, I’m assuming you’re not drawing the line all the way at “marriage has innate meaning” - that is to say, the hardline position that Saussure discredited. We’re at least recognizing that the string of characters “marriage” has no sort of innate relationship with any concept.

I mean, there’s plenty of positions between a Quinean “Words have no meaning” and a sort of neo-Platonist linguistics. Words do change over time. That is why we do not speak Old English.

And, I mean, let’s be clear - I’m making a simple counterargument here. The argument that “We must ban gay marriage because marriage is defined as between a man and a woman” doesn’t particularly work. The argument really needs to rest on something that actually engages the issues - perhaps some explanation of why gay marriage is bad.

As I said - life requires a consistant questioning and re-evaluation of principles, beliefs, and concepts. That’s called “progress.” I’m not necessarily saying that gay marriage is progress or not - but the simple fact that it’s different, that it is not what marriage meant in 1976, etc - is not evidence of anything at all.

Isn’t it true that because of the liberal nominalist, if dictionaries start using variant definitions of marriage and thereby corrupt the word, and if religions and most people start disassociating themselves from the corruption and begin using expressions such as religious marriage, Biblical marriage, or traditional marriage, the liberal nominalists will insist their “marriages” are equal to those things and will stop using their corrupted word and start using the new expressions to include their corruption?

Before Mr. Sandifer goes on to other points, he needs to make an account of the contradiction I called him out on in my post of 1:38 a.m. and answer the question I asked him then. I quote it in part:

“Here is what [Mr. Sandifer] originally wrote:

“‘So I think there’s something rather odd about making the argument that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, when two respected dictionaries demonstrate the exact opposite.’

“In this statement, he’s not saying, ‘Oh, by the way, the definition of marriage just changed the day before yesterday, and we ought to consider adopting this new definition.’ No, he’s acting as if this brand new definition DISPROVES the conservative argument that marriage has always been defined as a man and a woman, indeed, that it makes that argument seem ‘odd.’ But now that he’s been called out on that statement, he comes back and adopts this whole different argument that homosexual marriage is part of the flow of constant change and that we need to adjust ourselves to that constant change.

“So, which is it, Mr. Sandifer? Has the definition of marriage always included same-sex couples? Or is that a radical innovation that just appeared in the last couple of years that the innovators are trying to force on the rest of us?”

Mr. Sandifer wrote:
“I mean, I’m assuming you’re not drawing the line all the way at “marriage has innate meaning” - that is to say, the hardline position that Saussure discredited. We’re at least recognizing that the string of characters “marriage” has no sort of innate relationship with any concept.”

Whether the string “m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e” itself has inherent meaning or not is less than irrelevant. Why change its ontological referents in your discourse if the intent isn’t obfuscation?

Or go to the dance with Jacques Derrida if you like; but don’t expect any rationally coherent dance partners to join you.

Mr. Sandifer seems to believe that any reflective person must “at least” concede that “the string of characters “marriage” has no sort of innate relationship with any concept”. Of course the relation is not “innate” to that string of marks. But it is, nevertheless, sufficiently fixed by the use of English speakers, and by its relations to other strings such as “wife” and “husband”, that it is entirely legitimate to wonder whether the string “homosexual marriage” is even intelligible. Just as it would be to wonder whether the string “square circle” is intelligible.

This is why Matt’s ontological point is sound. For notice how easy it is to transform a proposition about language into a proposition about extra-linguistic reality:

“The English string ‘homosexual marriage’ is unintelligible because of what the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘marriage’ connote and denote”

becomes

“Homosexual marriage is metaphysically impossible because of what homosexuality is and what marriage is”.

If either of those is true, the other is true is as well. Proponents of “homosexual marriage” cannot stipulate that a string with an existing meaning and reference nevertheless means and refers to something else entirely AND engage in substantive debate with English speakers who use the string according to established usage. The Humpty Dumpty theory of linguistic meaning is a good deal more implausible than the Platonism Mr. Sandifer thinks is untenable. Rather, the (unsound) argument for “homosexual marriage” can only be that marriage should be abolished in favor of something else. (Incidentally, Quine does not say that “words have no meaning”; he says they have no meaning *independently of some world-theory or other*. A very different thesis.)

Matt beat me to the punch! I hadn’t seen his response before I posted mine. Maybe mine serves to spell out (so to speak) Matt’s point. If not, sorry to take up so much space.

Julien wrote:
“Rather, the (unsound) argument for “homosexual marriage” can only be that marriage should be abolished in favor of something else.”

This, however, cannot be allowed because it is a violation of inclusiveness; and the point is to make the string “marriage” refer to something new and more inclusive than the old. Liberals can’t abide the prospect of discriminating between good and evil and therfore abolishing something; rather it has to be a matter of making what is, more inclusive. In practice rather than abolishing evil things liberals end up abolishing all things. On the discursive surface the paint is kept shiny and new - pay no attention to the lexicographer behind the curtain - but beneath it is all rot.

I thought Julien’s post was succinct and cogent. I wasn’t trying to get people to speak in telegraphese, but just to avoid unnecessary length. :-)

Which reminds me of this maxim of La Rochefoucauld:

La véritable éloquence consiste à dire tout ce qu’il faut, et à ne dire que ce qu’il faut.

Which I would roughly translate as

True eloquence consists in saying everything that is necessary, and in not saying more than is necessary.

And speaking of succinctness, here’s the quote of the week, by Matt:

“In practice, rather than abolishing evil things, liberals end up abolishing all things.”

Which is it? It’s irrelevent - as I’ve repeated in most of my last few posts, the argument from tradition has no particular force.

The relevence of the innate meaning of the string argument was that, barring some equally authoritative move, the only basis for defining the meaning of a word is going to be some sort of social consensus - that is to say, words will change meaning with societal attitudes. In this regard, I find the “definition” angle that the right seems to be taking with this issue bizzare. Because, well, I’m not convinced that there aren’t enough people who believe in the notion of gay marriage that the word doesn’t by necessity exist. I mean, if nothing else, the fact that we are having a conversation right now about gay marriage seems to me evidence that, at least on a conceptual level, gay marriage exists. The legislative question, to me, should be whether or not gay marriage is legal - not whether or not it’s existant.

As for the invocation of Derrida… while I respect his scholarship, and while I think the popular conception of what he says is erroneous in the extreme, rest assured that I am no fan of him.

Mr. Sandifer seems to be still under the illusion that the discussion is about defining terms, or showing that there is a ‘posse’ out there adding their wills to the proposition “gay marriage” thereby, in a pure act of the will, construcing an ontological reality in which “gay marriage” is not an oxymoron and at the same time “marriage” still means what it meant before.

Keep willing it, Mr. Sandifer! If you concentrate hard enough reality will conform to your incantations!

I agree, by the way, that when conservatives say “marriage is the union of a man and a woman by definition” that is discursively sloppy language. In fact marriage ontologically is (among other things) the union of a man and a woman; and a more accurate phrasing of the conservative sound bite is that this fact cannot be changed simply by shuffling labels about.

I’m not sure that marriage is ontologically anything, being as it’s pretty clearly a social rather than an intrinsic right…

Mr. Sandifer writes:
“I’m not sure that marriage is ontologically anything…”

Precisely. That is because you are a nominalist. QED.

No wonder Mr. Sandifer is pre-occupied with the indeterminacy of the meaning of words: his own words convey no intelligible meaning and are just an exercise in obfuscation and evasion. If his comment does convey any meaning, it is the attempt to preclude all meaning, except for the notion that our wishes determine reality.

Also, he hasn’t given any ground on his earlier statement, where he said that there’s something “rather odd” about saying that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman. Here he repeats that he finds that view “bizarre.” What this means is that he doesn’t just disagree with those who think marriage by definition consists of a man and a woman, he finds their view _irrational_. Since there’s no common ground of reason between us, we can let this conversation end.

No court can supercede the divine laws of God repsecting the institution of marriage. If there is judicious interference on grounds of tolerance as advocated by the gay community and its right to mate without lawful restriction, then the whole idea of moral persuasion is condemned and any further imposition would be quashed.How does society, as a whole,continue under demands which run contrary to civiltiy and peaceful coexistence.With no lines drawn respecting the rightness and order of societal arrangements, we would revert to suspicion and fear against not only our neighbor but nearly all human associations. Corruption in whatever form undermines the values by which we are all governed.

Mr. Sandifer’s insistence that the issue is whether “the word doesn’t by necessity exist” illustrates his confusion. Obviously the *words* “gay marriage” exist, just as the words “slithy tove” exist. That tells us nothing at all as to whether there is any meaning that can be assigned to those words. The point of the preceding comments has been that this purported *meaning* (necessarily) does not exist.

By the same token, the mere fact that there are people - millions, even! - who think they are expressing a certain belief by uttering the words “I believe in gay marriage” doesn’t show that their words actually have a coherent meaning or that they actually believe something.

Matt: It may be fine to say that “by definition” a marriage is union of a man and a woman (that is, a marriage). I think this is what Aristotle would call a “real definition”: it doesn’t define a *word*, but a thing. It tells us the nature or essence of a thing. And whatever it may be, if there is such a thing it can’t be changed by fiddling with words.

Matt writes: “Mr. Sandifer [is] showing that there is a ‘posse’ out there adding their wills to the proposition ‘gay marriage’ whereby, in a pure act of the will, [they will construct] an ontological reality in which ‘gay marriage’ is not an oxymoron and at the same time ‘marriage’ still means what it meant before.”

In other words, Sandifer & Co. want to define marriage as they want, as same-sex, while still keeping the familiar definition of marriage and the values and respect pertaining to marriage. Nominalism, like liberalism, is parasitic on the world (and not a benign parasite but an ungrateful and destructive parasite). Liberalism/Nominalism assumes the existence of certain values provided by society, even as it attacks those values for not being distributed “equally”; thus it attacks marriage for not being distributed “equally” between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples. To effect the desired “equal” distribution, it denies the very essence of the thing to be distributed, even as it seeks to appropriate that essence for itself.

If leftism is the political expression of the rebellion against God and truth, then nominalism is the metaphysical expression of that same rebellion.

Matt writes:

“I agree, by the way, that when conservatives say ‘marriage is the union of a man and a woman by definition’ that is discursively sloppy language. In fact marriage ontologically is (among other things) the union of a man and a woman; and a more accurate phrasing of the conservative sound bite is that this fact cannot be changed simply by shuffling labels about.”

I agree with Matt, but in partial defense of the language he’s criticizing I would add that it is people’s way of being less dogmatic, of appealing to history rather than philosophical essences, of saying, “This is the way it’s always been” rather than sounding like an authority on high saying “This is what it is.” But maybe people’s uneasiness with the latter approach is part of the problem.

The problem with the sithy love example is that it’s a nonsense word. Gay marriage, on the other hand, demonstrably has the exact meaning that you’re asking whether or not it has, as evidencd by the fact that we’re talking about it.

As for the nominalism argument, I find it dryly amusing that Mr. Auster chooses the word “parasitic” to describe it. Has he perhaps read Wayne Booth’s article in which he makes that exact criticism of Deconstruction? If so, is he aware of J. Hillis Miller’s “The Critic as Host?” Is he aware that almost everyone considers Miller to have won that debate? Again, I do not bring this answer up as a ringing endorsement of deconstruction - I hate deconstruction, and am quite glad for it’s passing from popularity at the academy. I’m just pointing out that perhaps a finer brush would be in order for this discussion.

The absurd thing being that marriage doesn’t need to be ontologically defined in order to maintain its “purity”. I mean, it’s not as though acknowledging that marriage is a social institution denies the possibility of forbidding it from occurring between two same sex partners. Surely there’s some argument beyond the argument from tradition. I’m not denying the possibility of ontological categories here. I mean, I’ll even take the step that ought to pretty definitively set me apart from nominalism, and say that “good” is an ontologically defined category.

“Marriage,” on the other hand, exists as a social institution - it comes into being as a meaningful term only if a surrounding society recognizes it. Which is why other cultures have such notions as child marriage, arranged marriage, and multiple wives. Do these institutions similarly “not exist?” Of course not. They exist as things that our society has determined it does not want.

We can decide that we don’t want gay marriage without deciding that it doesn’t exist.

I suppose whether the conservative sound-bite is sloppy or not depends, as Julien points out, on the definition of the word “definition” :-).

“I don’t think ‘categorically’ means what you think it means!” - _The Princess Bride_

Mr. Sandler writes:
“The problem with the sithy love example is that it’s a nonsense word. Gay marriage, on the other hand, demonstrably has the exact meaning that you’re asking whether or not it has, as evidencd by the fact that we’re talking about it.”

It has precisely as much meaning as “round square”, as evidenced by the fact that we are talking about it.

“I mean, I’ll even take the step that ought to pretty definitively set me apart from nominalism, and say that “good” is an ontologically defined category.”

Ah, but there is no comprehensively consistent nominalist outside of the insane asylum. What our friend is, is a nominalist with respect to marriage. The fact that many of us find that every bit as ridiculous as being a nominalist with respect to geometry isn’t getting through, so I believe I am quite finished in this discussion. But my thanks to all who participated, stogeys and snifters all around.

I am not sure how one would go around discussing a round square, except as a string - that is, to discuss r-o-u-n-d-space-s-q-u-a-r-e, rather than any thing or idea that is signified. I don’t really believe that’s a problem with “gay marriage.”

I’ll believe that you find the notion of nominalism with regard to marriage absurd, though I confess, I can’t find any reason for that. Let me try this question: What is the source of the concept “marriage?” That is to say, what is the cause that results in marriage existing? It seems to me that it has to be said to come out of a social contract. This isn’t post-modernism - this is Enlightenment philosophy. Unless Hobbes, Locke, and Kant have unexpectedly become postmodernists - news that would probably shock them as much as it would shock the postmodernists.

Put another way, it is possible to categorize things as either independently existant or dependently existant. Independently existant objects would continue to exist even of all sentient beings disappeared. Rocks, sofas, atoms. Dependently existant objects rely on the existence of a socially negotiated language to continue existing. Were humanity to disappear, these things would go away with it. Laws. War. Fear. Dependent objects can roughly be divided into two more categories - the actual and hypothetical. Laws, war, and fear are actual - they refer to things that exist, but that exist only as the result of human consensus. Unicorns are hypothetical - we can all agree what the term refers to, even though there is no object to which they refer. But both of these categories rely on humanity for their function. If we disappear, so will war, and so will the concept of unicorns.

I think that the argument that marriage is anything other than a dependent object is a very, very difficult one to make. Certainly, it hasn’t been made in this discussion yet. I mean, from what source do you want marriage to originate if not from social contract?

So Mr. Sandifer is like the positivists who say that the only objective reality is that which can be physically experienced or proven by scientific experiment. Rocks and trees and eagles have an objective essence, but marriage does not, honor does not, country does not, the loveability of a child (to use C.S. Lewis’s example) does not, and marriage does not.

This, finally, is the unbridgeable gap between Mr. Sandifer and the traditionalists who post at this site. For traditionalists, transcendent realities are real, they constitute our very existence as social, biological and moral beings. For Mr. Sandifer, such notions are merely “odd” and “bizarre.”

These are mutually incompatible understandings of reality.

As has been the norm for this discussion, Mr. Auster continues to misrepresent my viewpoints. Transcendent concepts are certainly real, and do constitute our existence as social and moral beings (I’m not sure biological, but that’s beside the point.)

I’m not denying any of these things’ objective existences. I’m just noting that the cause of those existences is a human society.

I’m not sure how this is something non-traditionalist. It’s easily located in Enlightenment philosophy. Certainly, it’s integral to Kant. (If one were to allign my philosophy with a single thinker, it would be Kant)

I repeat my challenge. Ground the notion of marriage in something other than social contract, and we can proceed to discuss. But as of yet, the two options presented in this discussion appear to be “marriage exists because of social realization” and “marriage does not exist because of social realization.” But there doesn’t seem to be any sense of what, in that case, it does exist because of.

I have absolutely no idea of what Mr. Sandifer is saying. Either he is simply an incoherent thinker and writer, or he is speaking some esoteric language picked up in today’s academy. In either case, it is not a language suited for common debate and discourse.

The problem with Kant’s philosophy as a thing-in-itself is that we can’t know anything about it. […rim shot…]

[… takes puff from cuban, sips from snifter…]

Hmmm… prolegomena to any future Kantian wedding… phenomenal marriages are possible, but we can’t know anything about what they are in themselves…

Look! It waddles! It quacks! It swims! It has feathers and wings, webbed feet and a bill! But we can’t say it is a duck unless we can say _what it exists because of_! If someone wants to call that big grey thing with tusks and trunk a duck, why that’s just…ducky!

What I want to know is, if everyone required an accounting of the final cause of every existence would discourse still be possible? Or does our friend’s demand violate the categorical imperative?

What is that apparatus attached to Mr. Sandifer’s petard, anyway?

“I am not sure how one would go around discussing a round square, except as a string - that is, to discuss r-o-u-n-d-space-s-q-u-a-r-e, rather than any thing or idea that is signified. I don’t really believe that’s a problem with “gay marriage.””

Well, one could discuss the meaning of the term “round” and the meaning of the term “square”. Given what those mean - and given what roundness is and what squares are - we can say that the idea that something could be both round and square is incoherent. The problem with “gay marriage” is the same: “gay” means something, “marriage” means something, and the two meanings cannot be coherently combined. How many more times does this point need to be made before it becomes intelligible to Mr. Sandifer, who seems to have no such trouble understanding transcendental idealism?

“the two options presented in this discussion appear to be “marriage exists because of social realization” and “marriage does not exist because of social realization.”

Well, whatever it may exist “because of”, and whatever that means, exactly, it assuredly exists. So it has a certain character. Deleting a dictionary entry does not change that. This is not an “argument from tradition”, it is an argument from the nature of the thing in question. Again, the point has been made more than once. I don’t see how it can be clarified any further. Certainly it seems a lot clearer than the argument that the institution of marriage somehow cannot be anything in particular unless it exists “independently” of any sentient being.

But anyway, can anyone *really* believe that in order to discover whether or not a marriage can be a union of two men we need to understand the Critique of Pure Reason? I don’t understand advanced physics, but I doubt that leaves me unable to know whether Mount Everest is bigger than my foot. The mere fact that Mr. Sandifer seems to keep introducing ever more abstruse elements into the discussion suggests that he has no real argument.

One last comment, then I’ll be done. First Mr. Sandifer says that marriage is just a string of letters than can have any meaning we put into it, and then he turns around and says that “Transcendent concepts are certainly real, and do constitute our existence as social and moral beings.”

As Kant said, genug ist genug.

Wouldn’t Galileo’s redefinition of the universe be considered nominalism according to his time? In retrospect, it is obviously not as his case was obviously being ignored by the church, but needless to say, he was right. Of course, late apologies are pretty useless from a dead man’s perspective.
I would much rather have a balance between nominalist philosophy and conceptualist philosophy. Though nominalism ultimate does lead to anarchy, the potential in the other direction is despotism. Balance.

The parallel with Galileo’s “redefinition” of the universe would be convincing if Galileo had said that:
(i) the universe just is whatever we decide to say it is, and therefore there can be no objection to saying that it is heliocentric (or that isn’t) independent of what the majority of people would like it to be; or
(ii) everyone has always believed that the earth orbits the sun, and therefore there is really nothing to debate.
Of course this isn’t what Galileo said. He said that people had been *wrong* about the nature of the universe, and argued that the traditional conception of things had to be replaced with something different. This is not nominalism or irrealism. (Or conceptualism, for that matter.) Anyhow, it’s pretty hard to believe that we could be similarly mistaken about the nature of marriage.

As a minor quibble, it should also be pointed out that Galileo was tossed out when Einstein was ushered in. And Galileo’s problems with the Church were that he was teaching his theory as fact rather than as theory, and that he refused to stop doing so; not that he was teaching his theory at all. The delicious irony is that 1) the Church, it turns out, was right on the epistemic determination (i.e. Galileo’s theory was a theory not fact, and in fact it was a wrong theory); and 2) the current Pope has apologized for the Galileo affair.

Irony, irony, irony.

I am starting to warm up to the notion that a thing can’t be anything in particular unless it exists independently of any sentient being. I expect Mr. Sandifer “has” a bunch of non-stuff that he is arbitrarily labeling “money” “in” some “accounts”. But because it isn’t anything in particular I am sure he wouldn’t mind “wiring” that “money” according to a little piece of paper I send him. Oh and about those “deeds” to his “p-r-o-p-e-r-t-y”…

Maybe talking to nominalists isn’t such a waste of time after all…

I’m fairly certain, actually, that I never mentioned the Critique of Pure Reason. Especially since, as Julien points out, it is more or less entirely irrelevent to this discussion.

The relevent portion of Kant for a discussion of marriage would spring from the Metaphysic of Morals. But, really, I mentioned the Kant incidentally - it seems to have been seized upon with some zeal, but I’ve no real idea why.

So, let’s see… what do we have to argue against this morning… Well, the relevence of the social origin of marriage is that, if marriage originates out of a social contract, then it is in fact the perogative of the state to define marriage. In a democratic state, that does leave the perogative in the hands of the people. This should not be a radical concept - plenty of other definitions are left in the hands of the state (Minor, rape, pornography…). The only problem I can see with leaving marriage on this list is that the state is moving closer to a decision that you don’t like. Unfortunately, in a democracy, these things happen from time to time.

Mr. Auster suggests incoherence on my part… I confess confusion to that. If I were going to lose people anywhere in the argument, I’d have imagined dependent and independent concepts would have been it. I’ll confess to a level of academic discourse. Then again, when discussing ontology, political philosophy, and the origination of rights, I’m not sure why academic discourse should be avoided. After all, the academies are where this kind of dialogue tends to go on.

Since it appears to be the style of rhetoric on this site to end posts with claims that are not actually supported by what one’s interlocutors are saying, perhaps the reason so much is made of the complexity of my posts is that no one has a satisfying answer for the simple and clear portions of them beyond “Gays are icky.”

Matt - it seems almost as though, in an attempt to head deconstruction off at the pass, you have decided that concepts must either be ontologically founded, or subjective. The problem is that this takes you to a position even more indefensible than the one that Derrida attacks - sure, it may save you from deconstruction, but it does it by taking you back to pre-19th century linguistics, and making natural language experiments start seeming like a really good idea again.

It is next to impossible to use language without accepting a social negotiation of concept. The entire relationship between the inscription “t-r-e-e” and the leafy things with wooden bits sticking out the bottom relies on social mediation. Which is why elsewhere the appropriate inscription for said leafy things is “a-r-b-o-r”.

I mean, unless you want some sort of absolute and essentialist correlation between word and concept, you’re going to have to resort to a socially constructed meaning somewhere. What’s strange here is that I have never once made the leap from social construction of meaning to wild post-modern subjectivism. That leap has only ever been made by people arguing against me. My point in the last few posts has been that there is no reason to make this leap. In fact, one can have socially construced meaning that is objective.

One can even have linguistic change over time without losing objectivity in language. In fact, most linguistic theory allows for exactly that. It’s only in this bizzare binary opposition of subjectivism and ontological foundation of everything that the problem arises.

Mr. Sandifer mistakes me for an enlightenment guy, and as a result he is arguing with the air.

Also, all his protestations about linguistics are — this has also been said many times — irrelevant. The only person who seems to think we can’t have this discussion without a comprehensive account of the origin and source of being of marriage is Mr. Sandifer himself.

If Mr. Sandifer wants to argue that marriage ought to be abolished and replaced with something entirely different that includes long term vows of intrinsically sterile mutual buggery, I will go back to my cigars and brandy and let him talk to whomever he will in peace. My participation in this discussion has been predicated on the fact that he wants to play torturous games with words rather than simply saying what he advocates forthrightly.

If he continues to insist on this, I again make my recommendation that there is no point in talking to a nominalist. The last several thousand words, representing the attempt to get him to formulate his thesis in honest language, is a demonstration of why it is useless to talk to nominalists - or people with nominalist tendencies - on a substantive point. You never actually get to the substantive point. Instead you spend thousands of words discussing abstruse linguistics as the nominalist attempts to negotiate a justification for using obfuscatory terms rather than forthright terms.

Yes - I admit to having been arguing the negative position so far. I haven’t advocated gay marriage in this discussion. I entered it arguing against Joshua’s appeal to dictionary and tradition, and have pretty much kept my arguments to that. That caused the discussion to move quickly into ontology of concepts. Far from my first choice of things to discuss either, but not something I’m lacking in knowledge about.

If you want my position on gay marriage, feel free to ask, but, frankly, the rhetoric of this site suggests that people tend to get categorized and written off as part of that category very quickly. So, really, I’m inclined to limit my contributions to critiques of existant arguments, rather than to risk having everything I say written off beause I’m a “liberal,” a “nominalist,” or whatnot.

Suffice it to say, as I have before, that I am a firm believer that every viewpoint, assumption, and belief should be subjected to rigorous critique, and, as needed revision.

Consider me the voice of skepticism, questioning, and critique. I don’t intend to advocate many positions, and I don’t expect that my positions will remain consistant from thread to thread. That’s not to say I don’t have consistant positions. I do, and they influence my voting, my academic writing, my conversation among friends, and even my conversation elsewhere on the internet. But at least in terms of what motivates me to post here, it’s the desire to see the arguments here get honed and improved.

Matt, it seems one could refrain from labeling dishonest a person that has engaged in an act of nominalism, which is dishonesty. But after pointing out the dishonesty and after the person persists, one will profit from telling the person they are being dishonest and then shaking their dust from one’s clothes.

The nominalists I have observed here over the many months are incapable of honest discussion. It is like talking to a schizophrenic; they cannot think like the rest of us. The poor schizophrenic cannot be cured. The nominalist has a chance of cure or of improvement through psychotherapy or an epiphany but not through rational argument, which they are incapable of. I can’t imagine being married to one.

Your and Mr. Auster’s instruction on nominalism were appreciated.

Which would all be fine and relevent if I were a nominalist.

Which I’m not.

A minor clarification here.

Mr. Sandifer wrote:
“Matt - it seems almost as though, in an attempt to head deconstruction off at the pass…”

I have no intention to head postmodernism off at the pass, nor would I be successful in the attempt if I did have such an intention. Derrida is the natural outcome of modern thought; he is the bullet in the self-constructed suicide-gun of the enlightenment. The enlightenment is already dead by its own hand, although many people do not yet realize it: still they sit around the table with the corpse, hoping to hear it regale them with its tales of a far off land of free love, emancipation from nature, and equality. But its laughter and voice are the laughter and voice of a corpse.

OK, I’m close to announcing my own exhaustion with this particular debate. One last attempt.

The claim that Matt, Mr. Auster and I have been defending is that marriage has a certain character, and that, therefore, the proposal that it has some other character is either
(i) false or (ii) incoherent. It is false if the proposal is that marriage does not in fact have the character it does, and incoherent if it is that it does have that character but also has another character that would logically exclude the first.

The argument holds generally regardless of what we are talking about: If a is F, then it is false to say that a is not-F, and incoherent to say that a is both F and not-F. In this case, substitute “union of a man and a woman” for “F” and “marriage” for “a”.

Mr. Sandifer holds that this argument can be challenged by pointing out that marriage is a “social” institution, or that the meaning of the word “marriage” is “socially mediated”. As far as I can tell, this means that (1) marriage is something that people do - as opposed to rocks or numbers, I suppose - and that (2) the word “marriage” would not mean anything unless there were a community of speakers disposed to use it as they do.

I still don’t understand is why either of these obvious truths that none of the rest of us have denied is supposed to somehow cast doubt on the argument sketched above. Since the argument is obviously formally valid, the only way to attack it is to show that one of its premises isn’t true. But how could either (1) or (2) cast doubt on the claim that marriage has a certain character?

Friendships are likewise “social” entities, and the word “friendship” is likewise dependent for its meaning on what speakers do with it. Does Mr. Sandifer think that this shows that a friendship can be coherently understood as a relationship between oceans and the number 3, rather than between people? That friendships have no particular nature? I am honestly puzzled. What is his reasoning?

The relevence of the social construction is that, given popular support - something which all evidence suggests is growing (Compare poll numbers on gay marriage now to what they were five years ago). And, given a change in popular support, the definition of a social institution such as marriage does change.

So where do you go from, Matt? You seem almost neo-Platonist…

If people start to use the label “marriage” to refer to something else other than marriage, that will not change the object to which the label marriage now refers. It will merely be a shifting of labels from one thing to another, different thing. (I am tempted to say “duh”, but… well, OK, I’ll say it: duh).

“given a change in popular support, the definition of a social institution such as marriage does change.”

Can you see that this is question-begging? You’re saying that popular consensus can “define” the institution itself. But this is intelligible *only if* the institution does not already have a certain, particular nature. But that’s precisely what is in question. If it does have a nature, then no amount of fiddling with words, or amassing votes or doing polls is going to change that. At most, it can bring it about that *that* institution doesn’t exist anymore.

An analogy: suppose there is massive public support for “redefining” the institution of democracy. Everyone agrees that now it will be a form of absolute dictatorship with no elections, no Constitution, etc. Surely you can see that this just isn’t coherent: anything that has these latter properties *is not* democracy, whatever it might be called by the new ruling class, or by everyone in the world for that matter. By the same token, the statement “I believe American democracy should consist in absolute dictatorship with no Constitution” is incoherent. People might mouth the words, but there would be no coherent meaning attached; same goes for “I believe in gay marriage”.

In other words, there is no way to “redefine” a thing as something it *is not*, whether by popular support, meditation or threats and bribes. Words just aren’t that powerful. If you can see my point as regards the institution of democracy, can you explain how the institution of marriage differs?

Once upon a time in some class or other we learned to call the use of the same label to refer to different things as if they were were the same thing “equivocation”. On the street we called it “lying”, and in some contexts it could get you killed. When I’m being especially polite and my interlocutor doesn’t seem to be aware of doing it out of habit I’ll call it nominalism, because it often results from nominalist commitments of which the person is unaware. If a whole society gets together and decides to tell lies, even if the lies it tells are to itself, that doesn’t make them not lies.

But at the end of the day, an equivocation is an equivocation no matter what you call it. And once someone starts making syllogisms on top of an equivocation, it isn’t possible for him to speak anything but nonsense - no matter what authority, social or otherwise, he invokes to try to justify the equivocation.

Matt,
In this context, “nominalism” seems to be more than just the claim that there are no essences, properties, or whatever. Rather, it seems to be the view that (a) marriage is nothing in particular, and (b) it is or has always been what some democratic mass wills it to be. So the liberal shifts back and forth between the argument that because marriage has no nature it can be defined however we like, and the argument that it has a certain nature that includes homosexuality.

The liberal wants to be a nominalist as concerns the traditional concept of marriage, so as to ignore objections to his incoherent new “definition”. This is how he aims to avoid having to make the straightforward assertion that marriage *is not* a union of a man and a woman, or that marriage should be abolished. But he wants to be a realist about his own “definition”, so as to - he thinks - have some *reason* to prefer it over the old one. Thus, marriage is “really” about romance, feeling accepted by society, or sharing a health plan, or whatever. So it turns out it’s “really” about something, after all.

Then the dishonesty isn’t nominalism per se, but the liberal’s effort to combine nominalism and realism. Another triumph of the unfettered will, I guess…

Excellent summing up by Julien, and I wonder if there’s any more to say on this subject, except perhaps to draw a comparison. Just as the liberal is a nominalist as regards traditional marriage but a realist as regards homosexual marriage, the liberal is liberationist regarding traditional values but authoritarian as regards the imposition of his own values.

If the nominalists win by making the word marriage into whatever one wants, at least we will be able to marry our dogs instead of a nominalist.