Santorum blames gay marriage for bad economy

[Adam Griffin]

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So comparing good parents to terrible ones is supposed to be a compelling argument in favor?

The idea of "terrible parents" is very much based on your views of parenting. Both examples - for conservatives and liberals - are "terrible" when viewed through the eyes of the opposing force. My argument is that if conservatives want the ability to run their families, children and opportunities in the way they see fit, even if it is viewed as detrimental by others, then those individuals must also be prepared to accept a similar circumstance when it comes to other families that do not fit within their worldview.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Yessir. What he actually says makes sense here.

It's the broken window effect from crime applied to marriage and society. Keep the windows fixed and in good repair, and you avoid much of the problems that are becoming endemic in society.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Uh, I think you were going for the 'terrible' parenting with the ones who chug mountain dew.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but you're comparing "good parents" your first example, to "bad parents" in your second example.

Or have I misunderstood you?

Saying that because some people are crappy parents means that everyone is a crappy parent isn't going to get you where you want to go.

You want to say that because some not gay parents suck at parenting, ergo, gay people should be permitted because they suck less is a terrible argument.

Really it is. Go back and look at it again.

[Torie]

What evidence is there that gay marriages are more unstable than hetero ones, and in particular that gays who are married or unioned who have adopted are more unstable? One would think it is intuitively obvious that a married or unioned gay relationship is more stable than one that is not for starters. But here we are focusing on kids, so what is relevant is gays with kids, isn't it?

Whether gays not in the kid business marry or not without kids seems wholly unrelated to any economic argument, unless you think legalizing gay marriage or unions leads to more folks going gay, which is yet another assertion that if made, needs to be empirical documented, because facially it seems ludicrous.

[ajb]

It really says something about Mitt Romney's weakness that this guy is consistently running neck in neck with him, instead of being destroyed in a landslide as he would be against any half-competent politician.

As far as I can tell, the policies that Romney is running on are in no meaningful way to the left of those of Santorum. And for every time that Santorum mentions sex, Romney obnoxiously reminds us of his wealth.

Has Mittens said that gay unions/marriage leads to economic sub-performance over time?  Is so, I would be interested in seeing that in text. Because that would suggest disingenuousness  - or idiocy.

Not directly - but then again, what does Mittens say directly when he's campaigning? There is this, though, from the Saint Anselm debate:

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Obviously not the same thing - but that wasn't really my point. What I'm getting at is that Romney, while less likely to put his foot in his mouth over the issue, isn't campaigning based on a position any different from Santorum's. We could choose not to take his remarks at face value - but is there any good reason to do that?

Not the same at all actually. It has nothing to do with gay marriage. It might have something to do with gay adoption.  And I am not sure Mittens would oppose gay adoption, if the alternative, is leaving some kid without any parents at all.  Obviously I disagree with the concept that gays make inferior parents. I know gay parents who have adopted, and all of them have been fantastic, and doting, parents, and don't think they should be at the back of the line to adopt (and in CA they are not thankfully). It is total bullsh**t really.

You know what would be an interesting question to ask Mittens?  If the choice were a single parent family (which Mittens abhors), or a two gay parent family, which on balance would in general be preferable?  I wonder what his answer would be. I think I might make "arrangements" to ask him. I have my little channels.

Mitt Romney on same-sex marriage:
"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/on-gay-marriage-mitt-romney-veers-hard-to-the-right/2012/02/07/gIQALE48wQ_blog.html

Look, I find it comical when Rick Santorum tries to draw a link between gay marriage and recession. But Mitt Romney's opposition to gay marriage is just as unequivocal as Rick Santorum's.

[Alcon]

Except, Ben:

1. "Gay marriage weakens the natural family, because you're arguing that 'sex doesn't matter'" is an unfalsifiable claim whose proponents have consistently failed to furnish empirical evidence.

2. It ignores the positive effects of monogamy in general; in essence, it creates a "broken window" of normalized non-monogamy among gays.  If you are arguing that the gays' "broken window" in terms of "de-gendering" marriage affects heterosexual relationships, how can you ignore this effect, which seems like it would obviously outweigh the one you mention.

3. I have never seen any argument or indication that childless heterosexual relationships, or heterosexual relationships with adoptive children, have had any sort of this "broken window" effect -- which renders an already abstract, unfalsifiable claim even trickier to accept.

No?  I mean, I agree that it's not nutter versus some arguments out there, but do you actually find it a compelling argument?

[Adam Griffin]

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Uh, I think you were going for the 'terrible' parenting with the ones who chug mountain dew.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but you're comparing "good parents" your first example, to "bad parents" in your second example.

Or have I misunderstood you?

Obviously, I'm biased, but the argument in general is not. All you have to do is flip the paradigm to understand it, but that does require some form of empathy. The seeming debate (at least the title of the post) is on how gay marriage is detrimental to the economy. Based on that argument, conservatives view the other spectrum (the ones who don't chug Mountain Dew) as "terrible". My argument flips that perspective and creates an equal yet opposite position, which is the point I'm trying to make.

If gay couples are "terrible" parents and cause undue harm to the economy by filling their childrens' heads with the homosexual agenda and liberal ideas, then the same can be said for conservatives who defend the right to fill their children with unhealthy substances and religious indoctrination, which often restricts intellectual capacity and overall physical well-being, which in turn causes economic damage (or at least, the lack of economic prosperity).

The argument can easily be summarized as this: if you want the right to run your own life and those of your family, then you cannot expect to dictate to others how they are in the wrong for doing the same thing.

[Torie]

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Yes, but it is not tied to economic performance. It is based on moral grounds, just like the Catholic Church. The one assertion is basically nutter, the second is just one of those a priori metaphysical things. There is a difference. The one I can respect, even if I disagree, and I will oppose that point of view at the ballot box. The other is just plain ass wrong, because it makes empirical assertions that have no substantiation, and seems ludicrous on its face to boot.  

[Wisconsin+17]

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Well, as it's been shown in Canada, something like 1 percent of gay folks choose to get married. Which means that gay marriage is pointless. Why bother? There's no demand for it.

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But that's not what I'm talking about here. If you recognise all different types of relationships as 'marriage', then you are rewarding people for choosing other options. If you want to see a specific type of behavior, reward single moms for being single with plenty of goodies.

And this is what we are seeing. People who love each other are seeing that Marriage - really doesn't symbolize the extent of their love so they are doing other things. This is a consequence of 'changing the definition'.

If 10 percent of people choose not to get married whom otherwise would, that's a very significant and long-term effect on the overall wellbeing.

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It's relevant to everyone. You're separating, "marriage" from "having children" and there are negative economic consequences associated with that too.

I'm not saying, and I know Santorum's not saying that gay marriage is the root of all this - rather gay marriage is a symptom of problems that have been going on for quite some time. Look at out of wedlock births and you'll start to see what I, and Santorum are getting at. In 1955, 95 percent of black children were born in wedlock, now it's a minority.

[Torie]

Oh now we are on the track (yours, not Rick's) that if gays get married, less heteros will, and just breed more "bastard" children, or not breed at all. Is there any evidence of that?  When you are going to deny a class or persons equal rights, and degrade their relationship, you damn well better have good empirical evidence that they need to take a hit for the good of society as a whole. Otherwise, you deserve to lose the argument in the public square in my opinion.

Yes, out of wedlock births are rampant these days. That trend started long before the gay thing reared its "ugly" head. I am sure that you are aware of the actual reasons why that are typically listed, which have nothing to do with what gays do, which as you say, are just a blip on the radar screen in numbers vis a vis the gay marriage issue.

[Adam Griffin]

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Well, as it's been shown in the US, something like 2 percent of kids are homeschooled. Which means that homeschooling is pointless. Why bother? There's no demand for it.

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Legitimizing something is not the same as rewarding it. It also doesn't necessarily encourage that behavior; I don't think we'll see all that many heterosexual couples converting their traditional marriage into a gay one.  

[Wisconsin+17]

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Ok, let's go back a bit.

Do you believe that gay marriage argues that the sex you happen to be is irrelevant to your marital relationship? Yes or no?

How do you reconcile this position with the understanding of the marital union as consummation? Are you now arguing that consummation is unnecessary in a marital relationship?

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Gay people don't WANT marriage. They aren't getting married in Canada. Ergo, if 'increasing monogamy' is the goal, than gay marriage is an outright failure.

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Not when 1 percent of gay people are getting married. That's a tiny number. Even if the total number of marriages dropped by a tenth of a percent, the negative repercussions would far outweigh the positives.

And yes, marriage rates continue to drop.

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It's not a hard argument. Look at births out of wedlock. Those born out of wedlock are much less likely to do well.

No?  I mean, I agree that it's not nutter versus some arguments out there, but do you actually find it a compelling argument?

[Wisconsin+17]

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Look at marriage percentages and out of wedlock births among white people over most recent years.

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If they are not interested in it, then there is no need to grant them that which they do not want.

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If they want gay marriage to stick around, then they should actually make use of it.

[Torie]

Just because two thing happen at the same time, does not mean there is a causal relationship, particularly if one of those things started happening far earlier, for rather obvious non gay related reasons. Such partial simultaneity in such a context is really no evidence at all, and if you wrote an academic paper with just that, and not more, it would be trashed in the ivory tower for precisely those reasons.

Any gays should not have the right to get married, because a relatively small percentage will avail themselves of that right?  Really?  It is down to a numbers game? The number involved is too small to give a damn about their equality in the public square?

[Adam Griffin]

This argument is absurd. Just because gay people are not marrying in droves does not mean there is no support for gay marriage. Engaging in the act and desiring the right to be able to engage in the act are two different things. Only 11% of Americans own a firearm, but I guarantee you more than 11% of the country supports the right to bear arms.

Gay couples that do get married have been shown in numerous studies to have far more stable home lives, higher incomes and children that are better prepared to do well in school. Gay people don't procreate by accident. Your argument, Ben Kenobi, is correct in the sense that a strong family unit increases the likelihood of a child succeeding, but it is not correct within the narrow definition that you wish to enforce it.

[Wisconsin+17]

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What do you think would happen if you exempted homeschooling parents from school taxes?

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Yes, it is. There are public benefits that are associated with it.

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Not arguing that. I'm saying that they have no reason to convert their common law relationship into marriage, if they can obtain the same benefits without having to make the commitment.

Works this way with most things. Subsidize something, and you'll see more of it.

[ajb]

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Look at marriage percentages and out of wedlock births among white people over most recent years.

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If they are not interested in it, then there is no need to grant them that which they do not want.

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If they want gay marriage to stick around, then they should actually make use of it.

I've always thought that the general relaxing of divorce laws forty-some years ago was more likely to be responsible for the "broken windows" side of things. So would you support making it harder for couples to get divorced?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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Well, as it's been shown in Canada, something like 1 percent of gay folks choose to get married. Which means that gay marriage is pointless. Why bother? There's no demand for it.

I'm really going to need a citation on that. Who is measuring it? Everybody I know who is gay and in a long-term relationship either wants to get married or already is. Even if this statistic is legit, is it possible that the very low rate of gay marriage might have something to do with the relative difficulty of finding a marriageable partner who is attracted to the same sex as opposed to one who is attracted to the other in the first place? Also, how does this compare to marriage rates in Canada in general?

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But that's not what I'm talking about here. If you recognise all different types of relationships as 'marriage', then you are rewarding people for choosing other options. If you want to see a specific type of behavior, reward single moms for being single with plenty of goodies.

And this is what we are seeing. People who love each other are seeing that Marriage - really doesn't symbolize the extent of their love so they are doing other things. This is a consequence of 'changing the definition'.

If 10 percent of people choose not to get married whom otherwise would, that's a very significant and long-term effect on the overall wellbeing. [/quote]

Certainly, but I think that other things than gay marriage contribute to that. For instance, I think that it's to an extent an effect of the social and cultural atomization caused by the concept of the nuclear family itself. This sets 'marriage' apart as 'the way to found a family', and undercuts it when people realize that families can be and often are founded in other ways. This is why I don't support nuclear families but extended families, in which even if people do choose to eschew marriage for whatever reason there is an inbuilt system of social support and the same sort of social microcosm that the 'nuclear' family entails, except (in my view) considerably better. Incidentally, if the extended family or at least some parts of it are accepting of a member's homosexuality, that member could, one imagines, get gay-married and be involved in the upbringing of biologically related children with much more ease than in the atomized family structure we've been experimenting with for the past sixty-five-odd years.

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It's relevant to everyone. You're separating, "marriage" from "having children" and there are negative economic consequences associated with that too.[/quote]

I agree with this, but I'm not of the opinion that gay people having children is to be discouraged, again, particularly if there's a big lovely cornucopia of extended relatives to go around as potential childrearers and role models of whatever gender one might feel is necessary.

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I agree with you that marriage is institutionally broken. I view gay marriage as a way to salvage something of value from that brokenness. As with all else there were problems with the way marriage was done from the beginning, and just because it's worse than it used to be in a lot of ways doesn't mean there aren't still ways in which it can be made better.

I also really don't see how extending the marriage franchise in this manner is necessarily of a piece with subsidizing unmarried cohabitation. In fact it seems to me rather the opposite. I'd like to see serious campaigns towards getting gay couples to marry in jurisdictions where gay marriage is legal.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Now you're conceding that empirical evidence does in fact exist for Santorum's thesis. You're right that there can be and are other reasons for this, which is what Santorum's thesis argues.

He sees gay marriage as a symptom, not a cause.

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It's pretty hard to argue that you are being oppressed when 99 percent stay exactly the same as before.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Absolutely. I think it's in the interest of society to discourage divorce.

[Oakvale]

Don't dismiss this, guys. Sodom had an infamously weak economy.

[ajb]

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Absolutely. I think it's in the interest of society to discourage divorce.

In that case, given that changes in divorce law have been around for a long time, and have demonstrably contributed to the failure of millions of marriages, while same-sex marriage is still illegal and constitutionally prohibited in most states, shouldn't conservatives who care about preserving the traditional family place a higher priority on changing divorce laws, rather than on fighting gay marriage? Aren't conservatives in fact endangering the family themselves, by not pushing back against divorce laws?

[Torie]

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Now you're conceding that empirical evidence does in fact exist for Santorum's thesis. You're right that there can be and are other reasons for this, which is what Santorum's thesis argues.

He sees gay marriage as a symptom, not a cause.

No I am conceding that for a portion of the period involved both happened at the same time, although most of the decline in family stability occurred before gay marriage became an issue (for obvious non gay marriage related reasons). And you seem to be conceding that while gay marriage may be a "symptom" of something bad (I am still not sure what), banning it is not the cure. If banning it has no efficacy, then why should we ban it denying a class of persons equal rights in the public square?

[Torie]

Don't dismiss this, guys. Sodom had an infamously weak economy.

But gay friendly Athens had a fantastic one, until those "gay" Spartan warriors spoiled it all. So yes, gays can be bad for the economy come to think of it, if their armies beat your ass up.

[Alcon]

Ok, let's go back a bit.

Do you believe that gay marriage argues that the sex you happen to be is irrelevant to your marital relationship? Yes or no?

Obviously no, because I'm not dumb.  I believe that gay marriage argues that the sex you happen to be is irrelevant to the ends of the policy position.  That does not mean it's irrelevant to things that are pertinent to marriage or marriage policy, like procreative ability.  The fact that two situations are treated as the same in the broad policy does not mean they are the same, or that their equal treatment implies that the considerations are the same.

How do you reconcile this position with the understanding of the marital union as consummation? Are you now arguing that consummation is unnecessary in a marital relationship?

You'll have to tell me more about my understanding of the marital union as consummation.

Gay people don't WANT marriage. They aren't getting married in Canada. Ergo, if 'increasing monogamy' is the goal, than gay marriage is an outright failure.

Putting aside the fact that I'm not sure looking at gay marriage stats as conclusive after a few years makes much sense...a marginal effect is not the same as a non-effect.  You know what a non-failing policy is?  One that's 0.0001% better, in net, than the previous policy.

Not when 1 percent of gay people are getting married. That's a tiny number. Even if the total number of marriages dropped by a tenth of a percent, the negative repercussions would far outweigh the positives.

Your basic argument, although it's kind of confusing, seems to be that the dilution of the meaning of "marriage" so as to render sex irrelevant, has the potential to discourage people from entering marital relationships.  You argue that this "breaks" marriage,

Your argument has a few apparent flaws to me:

1. You're treating marginal effects as non-effects (selectively.)

2. You're dismissing positive externalities in the case of incentivizing gay monogamy, and I'm not sure why.

3. You're assuming that early marriage rates encapsulate all direct positives and positive externalities of gay marriage, and I'm not sure why.

4. You are assuming that including gays will structurally effect the institution of marriage, by the simple change of definition, as opposed to be limited to being a negative externality.  Basically, you're treating gay relationships as having externalities limited by their numbers when it's inconvenient to your argument, and having structural externalities to the whole institution when it's convenient to your argument.

5. You seem to be ignoring the parallel argument that incentivizing institutional monogamy would have a structural effect in encouraging long-term monogamy among all populations.  I don't see that as being any more falsifiable than your claim here, and yet you believe one but not the other.

6. Even if you can find a good enough reason to dismiss #5, this whole thing is based on secondary and tertiary correlations and yet you seem utterly confident of it for some inexplicable reason.  And, yet, you're dismissing marginal effects as being non-effects.  That seems whack to me.

I might be overcomplicating things here a little, but your argument seems like a mess.  A nuanced mess, but a mess.

It's not a hard argument. Look at births out of wedlock. Those born out of wedlock are much less likely to do well.

What does that have to do with childless or child-adopting heterosexual relationships (like the portion you quoted), and how does this all relate to the "consummation norm" or whatever?