Gay marriage opponents' strategy uncertain in 2015

[afleitch]

The state has an interest in marriage. A marriage means nothing and has no validity unless the state recognises it. That’s sort of the reason why this is an issue; same sex marriages have taken place, performed by religious celebrants for decades but have not been recognised (something ‘religious freedom’ advocates haven’t missed any sleep over).  Who are the two parties to a marriage, in the original sense? A man and a woman defined in law as an adult. That pre-requisite trumps every other definition, including any religious condition. In the Catholic Church for example, this is considered a ‘canonical impediment’. For example the US Conference of Catholic Bishops have never enacted an ecclesiastical prohibitive minimum age for marriage that varies from the Church standard of 16 years for males and 14 for females (not so in other nations) There is no ‘religious freedom’ to be entertained in allowing a 14 year old girl to marry because it violates the states definition of marriage in the fact she is not the age of majority.

The key point it this; when a man and a woman wish to marry and are denied by a celebrant for ‘religious reasons’ they are not denied because they are a man and a woman. They are denied for other reasons. If the state determines that it is in its interest that the all else being unchanged, the definition of marriage will include a man and a man and a woman and a woman, then religion faces another test. If a member of the clergy says ‘I won’t marry you because you don’t demonstrate enough faith’ or ‘one is of my faith and the other is not’ and essentially extends to the same sex couple the same objections as he would an opposite sex couple, then there is no issue. The problem is when a celebrant refuses to marry someone because they are a ‘man and a man’ (or even, in these new circumstances a man and a woman because they are not a man and a man or a woman and a woman) because that is a violation of the state interest in allowing same sex couples to marry.

Given Loving v Virginia, Employment Division v Smith etc, religious advocates have to prove to any court that exemptions against gays and gay married couples are so unique as to be afforded protection. The ‘reasonable objections’ towards refusing to facilitate the extension of LGBT rights or which marriage is one cannot be marshalled to justify slavery, racial discrimination, segregation or diminishing the legal status of women. They would fail. They have failed. Yet in every single instance an appeal to religious belief, text, practice, faith and ‘conscientious’ burden has been made before the courts. Intimating that religious opposition to these rights wasn’t ‘really religious’, in part because they moved on, when appeals to the divine pepper the briefs of state and federal court cases as late as the 1960’s does not hold up. People genuinely held these beliefs and wanted these exemptions. The state, eventually, reasoned that they were not justifiable. The fact that their pet peeve in this generation is LGBT rights and indeed one that even their children are beginning to move on from does not merit a unique appraisal.

[afleitch]

Country Class,

Don't get your hopes up that the poll is an outlier. Gay marriage is coming whether we like it or not, whether this poll shows it or not, and whether the Supreme Court says so in June or not. While the details of some minor side-issues haven't quite been decided yet, this one's over; it's a 20 point basketball game with a minute left.

So the question becomes, what now? Where do we as social conservatives go from here? Other than abortion (abortion is the only social issue with stable views across all age groups for most surveys) we are going to lose these fights and continue losing them. I think we may be hitting the reality that changing our culture and its morals can’t start with politics. It may end up there, but it has to start with individual people. As Mother Theresa once said, “Be the change you wish to see in others”. Hold strong to your moral convictions through thick and thin and don’t give in to whatever concupiscence you experience in life. We may individually feel that God is dead to our world, but realize that God can’t be dead to the world as long as he lives in you. I’m not saying don’t vote, but if we really want to change our society’s ideas of right and wrong the place to do it is in our lives not at the ballot box. As far as I can tell, no country was ever converted by voting for the right candidate.

To do any of this requires us not to collapse into bitterness and despair but to engage the world and to do it with love. No one has ever been convinced by a despairing rant.  The gulag may indeed be coming, but nothing makes the gulag as horrifying as the fear of the gulag. Your cross may be heavier than most, but it is still yours to carry through the pain. As Christians, we look to imitate Christ, who carried his cross, painful as it was, without a grudge. Carrying a grudge, bitterness, and anger, can only make your cross heavier, not lighter. As painful as it might be, you still have something to offer this world, a purpose in this life. No matter what the law says, no one can take that away.

Did you just out yourself?

[afleitch]

Country Class,

Don't get your hopes up that the poll is an outlier. Gay marriage is coming whether we like it or not, whether this poll shows it or not, and whether the Supreme Court says so in June or not. While the details of some minor side-issues haven't quite been decided yet, this one's over; it's a 20 point basketball game with a minute left.

So the question becomes, what now? Where do we as social conservatives go from here? Other than abortion (abortion is the only social issue with stable views across all age groups for most surveys) we are going to lose these fights and continue losing them. I think we may be hitting the reality that changing our culture and its morals can’t start with politics. It may end up there, but it has to start with individual people. As Mother Theresa once said, “Be the change you wish to see in others”. Hold strong to your moral convictions through thick and thin and don’t give in to whatever concupiscence you experience in life. We may individually feel that God is dead to our world, but realize that God can’t be dead to the world as long as he lives in you. I’m not saying don’t vote, but if we really want to change our society’s ideas of right and wrong the place to do it is in our lives not at the ballot box. As far as I can tell, no country was ever converted by voting for the right candidate.

To do any of this requires us not to collapse into bitterness and despair but to engage the world and to do it with love. No one has ever been convinced by a despairing rant.  The gulag may indeed be coming, but nothing makes the gulag as horrifying as the fear of the gulag. Your cross may be heavier than most, but it is still yours to carry through the pain. As Christians, we look to imitate Christ, who carried his cross, painful as it was, without a grudge. Carrying a grudge, bitterness, and anger, can only make your cross heavier, not lighter. As painful as it might be, you still have something to offer this world, a purpose in this life. No matter what the law says, no one can take that away.

Did you just out yourself?

No..? Did you just learn to read?

You used ‘we’ quite a lot and advised a (if we take him at his word) a self-loathing gay not to give into concupiscence. Then you said ‘to do this requires us..’ etc etc. The whole thing is peppered with ‘kinship’ and it came across you empathised with him on matters of sexual restraint. Given that your response to me wasn’t actually a response at all, but a dig at me apparently not being able to read doesn’t exactly allay matters.

[afleitch]

Did you just out yourself?

No..? Did you just learn to read?

You used ‘we’ quite a lot and advised a (if we take him at his word) a self-loathing gay not to give into concupiscence. Then you said ‘to do this requires us..’ etc etc. The whole thing is peppered with ‘kinship’ and it came across you empathised with him on matters of sexual restraint. Given that your response to me wasn’t actually a response at all, but a dig at me apparently not being able to read doesn’t exactly allay matters.

Andrew, it probably appeared the way it did to you because your focus on this topic is primarily your sexuality.  To me, as TJ made clear by his post while I was writing this, it appeared as TJ was empathizing with CCSF on his religion and politics.  And where did you get that he was advising him to not give in to his "concupiscence"?  It doesn't read that way at all to me.  Even if it did, there are plenty of Christians who advise us straights to not do that either.  Our whole modern culture could use a massive dose of concupiscence, tho not to the extremes some advocate.

When I was cleaning up this thread last night before heading to bed from the string of posts CCSF made and the replies thereto, TJ's long thoughtful post was the only thing I deemed salvageable precisely because it was focused on politics in my opinion.

What has warnings/encouragement from one poster to another not to give into concupiscence, the 'selfish' desire for sensuality and longing in the context of gay marriage (of which TJ, respectfully, is one of the least qualified posters on which to comment) have to do with wider politics at first glance?

It's distinctly personal, stuck out like a sort thumb and is why I raised it.

[afleitch]

That link TJ gave seemed to be about Lesbians by  the way. As noted, even assuming the data isn't GIGO, the real question to ask are the outcomes between children of unmarried gays, and married gays.

Up to 7 million children in the USA are being raised by same sex parents, many of whom have same sex partners. If children do better in married and stable homes (which I would actually dispute) then why on earth would social conservatives oppose these children's parents from being married? You have to deal with the realities of what's happening on the ground.

[afleitch]

What has marriage got to do with encouraging procreation when 41% of all new mothers in the USA are single or unmarried?

[afleitch]

What has marriage got to do with encouraging procreation when 41% of all new mothers in the USA are single or unmarried?

Assuming you're correct on that statistic, that still means 59% of all new mothers are married, meaning that marriage still makes procreation more likely.

No it doesn't. It demonstrates that there is no causal link and that in fact the only thing that 'encourages procreation' is sex.

[afleitch]

And from today's rally, the anti SSM movement today;

[afleitch]

Yes, I know there are benefits to marriage that have absolutely nothing to do with procreation such as joint tax filing, inheriting the estate of your spouse, health insurance benefits, hospital visitation and what not. But the state interest that most convinces the state to incentivize marriage is generally its interest in procreation, not its interest in insuring people or making tax filing easier.

You keep saying this over and over. But where is your evidence that that is the state's main interest when tested in law?

Justice Kagan said this in 2013:

JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, suppose a State said, ... Because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on procreation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both people are over the age of 55. Would that be constitutional?

MR. COOPER: No, Your Honor, it would not be constitutional.

KAGAN: Because that's the same State interest, I would think, you know. If you are over the age of 55, you don't help us serve the Government's interest in regulating procreation through marriage. So why is that different?

MR. COOPER: Your Honor, even with respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that ... both parties to the couple are infertile, and the traditional —

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE KAGAN: ... I can just assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.


Goodridge v. Department of Public Health was a landmark decision in Massachusetts in which the court addressed and dismissed the three rationales the DPH offered for its marriage licensing policy: "(1) providing a 'favorable setting for procreation'; (2) ensuring the optimal setting for child rearing, which the department defines as 'a two-parent family with one parent of each sex'; and (3) preserving scarce State and private financial resources."

The first, she wrote, incorrectly posits that the state privileges "procreative heterosexual intercourse between married people". Rather "Fertility is not a condition of marriage, nor is it grounds for divorce. People who have never consummated their marriage, and never plan to, may be and stay married."

The misconception that "'marriage is procreation'", she wrote, "confers an official stamp of approval on the destructive stereotype that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable and inferior to opposite-sex relationships and are not worthy of respect."

The second, the marriage of a man and a woman as the "optimal setting for child rearing", a claim she said many Massachusetts statutes and the notion of "the best interests of the child" refuted, she found irrelevant, in that denying marriage licenses to one class of persons does not effect the marriage patterns of the other class. She turned the argument against the DPH: "the task of child rearing for same-sex couples is made infinitely harder by their status as outliers to the marriage laws."

She concluded that "It cannot be rational under our laws, and indeed it is not permitted, to penalize children by depriving them of State benefits because the State disapproves of their parents' sexual orientation." She dismissed the third rationale as an unjustified generalization about the economic interdependence of same-sex partners.

[afleitch]

But wait. I'll grant you that gay couples procreate less than straight couples. But they can procreate and will likely procreate more if incentivized to enter marriages, and so if procreation is the only state interest at play, then granting marriage benefits to gay couples doesn't harm the state interest (and at least marginally furthers that interest). But gay couples are harmed by the stigma of discrimination when marriage benefits are withheld. So if extending marriage benefits to gay couples isn't detrimental to the state's interest in procreation, then why shouldn't the state have to provide marriage benefits in a non-discriminatory manner? The state gets what it wants, increased procreation, without the societal detriment of a subset of the population being marked as inferior.

You will of course answer that rational basis review doesn't require the state to undertake the type of analysis I just did, but that brings me to the real point of my question, which you didn't answer last time I asked it: why do you believe rational basis review is the appropriate level of scrutiny for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation?

^^

Wulfric, this is basically where my questions are leading.  Except never mind court review standards...you personally oppose same-sex marriage, too, and that's why the issues with this argument are probably fatal to your position.

I'm going slowly here because I'm trying not to be presumptive.  So far, though, you haven't given me anything that's even an arguably good defense against the issues in your argument.  As presented, your argument would require you to reach conclusions I think you'd agree are obviously absurd.

That's why I'm sincerely asking you to spend 15 minutes thinking hard about this, because either I'm missing something, or you're smarter than this untenable argument.

And in practice, the state doesn't incentivise procreation through recognising marriage. Because if it did, then the 41% of children born outside of wedlock wouldn't be provided, or more accurately, their parents wouldn't be provided with any or like-for-like financial and other assistance/support in helping them to raise their children. The state clearly provides for children and the parents of children regardless of whether or not they are married.

[afleitch]

A 90's meme?

You were so preoccupied with whether you could...