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Zasch
Posts:134
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| 06/01/2007 3:22 PM |
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| Again, feel free to respond to anything in the document that you like. The whole point is to gather more and more arguments. |
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Zasch
Posts:134
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| 06/09/2007 4:00 PM |
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Come now, this is becoming almost silly. It has been nearly a month, and you have yet to provide evidence to salvage any of your contentions. Indeed, you have yet to respond to the vast majority of my arguments.
I would appreciate it if you clarified your intentions with regard to this debate. Are you not responding because you do not intend to respond (perhaps because you have no response?)? |
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Zasch
Posts:134
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| 06/11/2007 10:40 AM |
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Though I realise I'm talking to an empty audience:
I was going through the US Senate legislative record, and I stumbled upon the Marriage amendment in the 109th. So I decided to read up on the debate that took place (yes, they actually do keep a record of these things). I found a very interesting segment that I wanted to share:
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GINGREY. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. This is a question, and I appreciate the civil spirit in which he discusses it. Would the gentleman explain to me does how the fact that two women in Massachusetts who are allowed to be legally committed to each other in any way endanger or threaten marriages between heterosexuals elsewhere?
Mr. GINGREY. Well, in response to the gentleman, again, as I said, it is not an issue of same-sex union.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. But how does it hurt?
Mr. GINGREY. And benefits that are afforded them by many States. The States certainly have the right to prescribe that in regard to issues of consanguinity and the age of consent and benefits for same-sex unions.
But they don't, in my opinion, have the right to redefine the definition of marriage.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. How does it hurt? How does the existence of a same-sex marriage in any way threaten a happy heterosexual marriage?
Mr. GINGREY. Reclaiming my time, I think that the gentlewoman from Colorado and those of us who support this constitutional amendment feel that this is all about marriage that results, or potentially can result, in the procreation of children. This is what our Constitution has implied for 223 years and, indeed, what the word of God has implied for 2,000 years.
With that, I will continue to reserve the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.
I would point to you how Mr. Gingrey simply refuses to answer the question, going so far as to reclaim his time when Mr. Frank asks it more pointedly.
Apparently the Republican leadership on this matter did not have an answer to Mr. Frank's question. Do you?
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mulhollandj
Posts:230
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| 06/11/2007 7:34 PM |
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| You may be interested to know that General Pace lost his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Is this somehow related to his comments stating his own personal opinion that homosexual acts were wrong? |
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mulhollandj
Posts:230
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| 06/11/2007 7:36 PM |
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| You may find this article interesting. http://www.ctfamily.org/editorial9.html |
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mulhollandj
Posts:230
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| 06/11/2007 7:40 PM |
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Here is another one about persecution of those who oppose homosexuality in Canada.
http://www.ctfamily.org/editorial43.html |
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mulhollandj
Posts:230
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| 06/11/2007 9:06 PM |
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| http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/660zypwj.asp and http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200602280810.asp talk about the destruction of the family in the Nordic regions. What do you think will happen to these countries in another 30 years? |
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Zasch
Posts:134
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| 06/11/2007 10:55 PM |
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You may be interested to know that General Pace lost his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Is this somehow related to his comments stating his own personal opinion that homosexual acts were wrong?
I am aware that this happend. I think that it has more to do with the fact that Iraq is really a big huge mess.
By the way, it seems that fewer and fewer people are being discharged for homosexuality than in the past. This decline happens to coincide with war. It seems interesting that, in times of nonwar, homosexuality will destroy morale, but in times of war it isn't quite the doom-and-gloom thing it used to be.
You may find this article interesting. http://www.ctfamily.org/editorial9.html
I will respond to the article itself.
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As Dr. David Popenoe, Social Sciences Dean at Rutgers University, has stated:
An interesting citation. From what I can tell, Mr. Popenoe tends to be concerned about cohabitation and that, since it is not as serious or permanent as marriage, it leads to problems later on.
The only thing I can really find that he says on the subject of gay marriage is a small review that he wrote for the book "What God Has Joined Together?: A Christian Case for Gay Marriage" - he, of course, says "A well reasoned, important, and timely contribution to the national debate."
Thus, I'm not entirely sure that he is the proper person to be citing.
I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue: on the whole, for children, two-parent families are preferable
This isn't a particularly good quote to bring in to support banning same-sex marriage: As far as I know, gays don't combine into one person when they marry, and thus the "two parent family" would still be met, and thus an imperative is proven for same-sex marriage.
However, the AAP decision has come under intense scrutiny by top social scientists, and for very good reason.
I note that the Family Institute fails to provide any source for this statement whatsoever.
Few studies exist on same-sex parenting and those that do simply do not fulfill the basic requirements of legitimate social science—large sample groups, control of variables, and an extension through a significant amount of time.
Then they would be rightly declared statistically invalid because they are peer reviewed. The fact that they seem not to be indicates either:
1. A conspiracy among the scientific community
2. A consensus among the scientific community
The plain truth is that most social scientists agree that having a mother and a father does matter.
Most find that having two parents does matter, and the bulk of research tends to be traditional heterosexual homes vs. single parent households.
“We’re going to find out with same-sex couples just what we found out with divorce. The children are at higher risk for problems."
There appears to be no evidence trending in this direction, and no mechanism is provided as to why this would be, and it seems to fly in the face of consensus. Unless some actual proof is given (I'm afraid that appeals to authority to the head of the Instute for American Values don't particularly constitute proof), I must remain deeply skeptical.
Basically your article makes a number of assertions, but doesn't back any of them up (indeed, it even uses a source that helps to disprove its point).
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http://www.ctfamily.org/editorial43.html
. (One Saskatchewan man was fined $5,000 for buying an ad in his local paper made up of verses from the bible.)
I imagine, and I'm sure Mr. Mulholland will clarify for me, that Canada has laws regulating so-called "hate speech". Without a source to this story, it is difficult for me to speculate further.
Even today, it’s doubtful that same-sex marriage would pass Parliament on a free vote:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Pub=Hansard&Doc=124&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=38&Ses=1#Div-156
http://www.parl.gc.ca/38/1/parlbus/chambus/senate/DEB-E/084db_2005-07-19-e.htm?Language=E&Parl=38&Ses=1#44
(Scroll up slightly, the division is above)
Also:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/07/vote-samesex.html
The conservatives attempted to reopen it, but it was once again defeated in the House of Commons. I can't find the measure number for it, but I don't have any reason to doubt it.
Thus, we can see that the article is basically wholly incorrect.
To put it more bluntly: the “federalist” approach to marriage will destroy either federalism (as states ignore each other’s judicial orders) or else it will destroy marriage (as individuals using their freedom of movement carry same-sex marriages with them into states that do not wish to recognize them).
We ought note that a Virginia court has since ruled that Virginia has no jurisdiction in the matter (as it is an internal matter of Vermont).
But again, this seems to be more an argument against the federalits structure, against Defence of Marriage, and against letting the states chooes this matter for themselves.
. For the same reason, people who believe in marriage as it has always been understood in the United States should insist on settling the issue now, with a federal constitutional amendment.
And yet that Constitutional amendment does not say "Marriage shall be the purview of the states", nor does it say "Marriage proceedings of one state, and all other legal considerations based upon marriage of one state, shall not affect any the laws or legal proceedings of any other state." - which would be all that is required to both preserve the choice of the states and to address these concerns. Instead, it wholly and entirely outlaws same sex unions, regardless of the will of the states, until another constitutional amendment is passed.
At the very least, let us end the fiction that the support for this amendment comes from "protecting the will of the people" since it does precisely the opposite.
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More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher.
Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute. If we want to be statistically honest, if we see a trend that was occuring PRIOR to X, and we see it still occuring POST X, to say that "X" has contributed is incredibly dishonest: Further studies into the matter would have to be concluded in order to establish that.
For instance: The health of marriage was declining in various states prior to banning gay marriage. It continues to decline post banning gay marriage. Therefore, banning gay marriage clearly undermines the family and makes "marriage" out to be a farce.
The statistics are both there, of course, but the causal or even correlative relationship is not.
Nice try though.
Take divorce. It's true that in Denmark, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, divorce numbers looked better in the nineties. But that's because the pool of married people has been shrinking for some time.
So basically there is no correlative relationship whatsoever - and this somehow proves that gay marriage undermines "traditional marriage"? Even you, Mr. Mulholland, must realise that this proof is extremely flimsy: If things have gotten better, not worse, then it cannot at all be used as an argument.
Many Danes have stopped holding off divorce until their kids are grown.
I hardly see this as a bad thing - if two people do not love each other....
And Denmark in the nineties saw a 25 percent increase in cohabiting couples with children.
In the Scandanavian countries, people are more reluctant to marry because it is more difficult to change later on, if anything else changes. I don't see why divorce should be made a difficult process at all, and thus I don't see a problem with cohabitation.
What about Spedale's report that the Danish marriage rate increased 10 percent from 1990 to 1996? Again, the news only appears to be good. First, there is no trend. Eurostat's just-released marriage rates for 2001 show declines in Sweden and Denmark (Norway hasn't reported).
Again, this is extremely dishonest analysis. If it *increased*, then predictions that gay marriage will lead to a massive decrease are probably unwarranted. Of course you will have increases and decreases - "statistical noise", if you will. It is like saying that, if you ate chocolate ice cream on a day the US stock market went down, even if you had eaten chocolate ice cream on days that the US stock market went up, clearly chocolate ice cream causes the US stock market to go down. That analysis is so obviously flawed as to be laughable.
Christer Hyggen shows that a small increase in Norway's marriage rate over the past decade has more to do with the institution's decline than with any renaissance.
If we measure the state of an institution by marriage rates, then to say that marriage in Norway declined *because* it went up is a blatant contradiction. Seriously, these arguments are awful.
These couples belong to the first generation that accepts rearing the first born child out of wedlock.
Wait a minute: If this generation believes in rearing the first cihld out of wedlock, then that means that children out of wedlock have been a common occurance in Norweign society for a *very long time*, far predating gay marriage. Norawy legalised same-sex unions 14 years ago: Thus, if the "first generation" of "old people" are doing this, they must have been born far far before 1993.
As for the rest of the increase in the Norwegian marriage rate, it is largely attributable to remarriage among the large number of divorced.
So, again, this article is trying to prove that marriage is weakning by showing that it went up. This is surreal.
Marriage is now so weak in Scandinavia that shifts in these rates no longer mean what they would in America.
And thus we remove this debate from the realm of science: There is nothing at all that can disprove what he says, since *any* indication upward is simply dismissed by saying "Well, marriage is so weak anyway that it doesn't indicate anything": Which is also circular: He is assuming the very thing he is trying to prove.
The article is very long, and I want to get to your other link, so if you want me to respond to the remainder of the article I can. It looks like mostly analysis, which a high anti-socialist bent (though it then tries to prove that the welfare state supports traditionalism, which is an odd turnaround in the middle of the argument), it admits that Sweden has higher human development indicators, it admits that Swedes themselves link these developments to secularism (not gay marriage). Part of it talks about how Canada is a part of the "middle group" for out of wedlock births (along with the US), which would seem to somewhat undermine the argument, and then it goes on to say that while "Sweden leads the world in family decline, the United States is runner-up", which entirely demolishes the argument.
Basically, it fails to establish any *correlative* link between gay marriage and either out of wedlock births or marriage failure rates or anything, and admits as such, and admits that the US gives it a run for its money, and admits that Sweden has higher human development, and fails to establish a causal link between marriage failure/whatever and human development (again, even admitting that Sweden has a higher human development)....
As well, on a more philosophical note, it seems to be basically arguing against the idea of self-determination and liberty. If people want to cohabitate, or divorce, or whatever, that is their choice: If they choose not to, that is fine too. We shouldn't make policy decisions on the basis of trying to make it as difficult as possible. We ought ntoe that in the United States, massachusetts has among the best divorce rates, being among the top 10 in the country: States that prohibit same sex unions, however, lag quite a bit on this scale.
If you were to use this in a debate, your entire case would essentially be turned against you, because this article uses highly dishonest methods of statistical analysis, essentially reduces its position to faith, and then basically goes on to self-destruct its own argument. It is really weird to read. I
I'm skimming your other link, because I got an e-mail saying you've replied to something else, but essentially the same arguments are made: A lack of an ability to draw a causal relationship between gay marriage and these other social consequences (indeed, some nations are ignored from the analysis because they didn't "have enough marriage" prior to legalising gay marriage to be worth analysis, which is highly revealing). A couple of odd statistical analyses are done ("If one thing correlates with another...why can't it work in reverse?"),
And furthermore, again, we arne't seeing large scale negative social effects upon these nations. They are more prosperous than they have ever been. So again, the argument that you've attemped to establish has failed on basically every level and moved out of the realm of reason and into the realm of faith.
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, France, Germany, Portugal, Finland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Andorra, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Colombia, Israel, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, and Canada all allow gays to form unions. Any analysis needs to include these countries, include the data from these countries (I'm sorry, but saying "lol norway doesn't count" because it doesn't fit your data is not at all proper statistical methodology), needs to establish a correlative and then a causal relationship between gay marriage and anything else, and then needs to establish that these things lead to significant harms. Your articles failed to do that at all, and the one before last was really bad in that it basically undermined itself at every turn.
If you want better arguments against gay marriage, I can give them to you. This line of reasoning is not the way to go on that, I'm afraid. |
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Zasch
Posts:134
Senior User
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| 06/14/2007 11:54 AM |
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In other news, an effort to ban gay marriage in Massachusetts has recently failed.
In order to get a referendum on the ballot, two consecutive sessions of the Massachusetts legislature would have had to have 50 legislators vote in favour. In one vote, it did get 62, but the second vote has recently returned 151 opposed, 45 in favour, and thus the initiative has failed to get on the 2008 ballot.
The next opportunity will be to get on the 2012 ballot. |
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mulhollandj
Posts:230
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| 06/29/2008 9:31 AM |
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I think that the issue really boils down to two groups trying to impose their morality on each other. One group, which happens to usually be an overwhelming majority, doesn't want gay marriage. For many reasons they find it immoral but ultimately the reasons don't matter. The other group finds gay marriage OK and important addition to society.
But these two views conflict. They are not compatible. The gay group claims they are persecuted unless there is a change and the religious group claims they will be discriminated against if the gay group has their way.
A few points. In this society the majority gets to choose the standard as long as it does not interfere with the set rights in Constitution of others.
Secondly, religious rights, not marriage rights are recognized in the Constitution.
So, since religious rights are protected, and the majority does not want gay marriage it shouldn't be legalized. |
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Debator
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| 08/07/2008 9:36 AM |
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Secondly, religious rights, not marriage rights are recognized in the Constitution.
You are correct. As far as I have been able to determine there is no federal Supreme Court precedent interpreting the US Constitution to include a federal right to marry as opposed to a federal right to privacy, for example. There have beeen cases that have recognized that the right to marry is fundamental to society, but they stop short of declaring that it is protected by the US Constitution.
I'm not sure about other states, but the Utah State Constitution also does not protect the right to marry. The only reference to marriage found in the constitution is the recent amendment limiting the right to marry to heterosexual couples.
So, since religious rights are protected, and the majority does not want gay marriage it shouldn't be legalized.
This statement is less accurate. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution states that all citizens shall be entitled to the same rights. Supreme Court precedent (Morrison, Loving v. Virginia, etc.) has clearly stated that if a state wants to recognize marriage, then it must do so equally for all citizens.
However, Loving and its progeny have only gone so far as to state that marriage must be recognized for the protected classes (race, gender, religion, etc.). No Supreme Court precedent has held that Sexual Orientation is a protected class.
I disagree with your statement insofar as it seems to indicate that religious rights are supreme over marriage rights. If the Constitution were really read to have that meaning, then if I belong to a religion that says that interracial marriages are wrong, then my right to freely exercise my religion would be infringed by the state allowing interracial marriage. This position has been rejected, and rightly so, by the US Supreme Court. My right to exercise my religion is not infringed by the independent actions of other people. If the state declares a certain activity to be protected, that doesn't infringe on my right to exercise my religion.
I expect that your rebuttal to this position is that when an enumerated right bumps up against an unenumerated right, the enumerated right should trump. I agree. However, I don't see the link between the state recognizing gay marriage and the infringement of my right to exercise my religion. People that disagree with gay marriage for religious reasons are still free to do so (1st amendment protection of free speech), but that doesn't mean that their right to exercise their religion has been infringed. |
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