3 ms·

OK, what do anti-gay-marriage people have to gain politically, if they got their way?

by scintill76 10y ago

cmdrfred 10y ago
The politicians get votes for one.
- scintill76 10y ago
  So politicians get votes, for promising to ban gay marriages and/or as reward for doing it? In other words, representative democracy is working as designed. Right? How is this different from other politicians getting votes for supporting gay marriage? It seems to me the "political gain" argument boils down to something almost meta-political; or of satisfaction/boldness in your tribe "winning", or politicians falsely professing things they know voters want -- these apply to both sides. When I asked, I was looking for something like how voter ID laws are supposedly really written to suppress voters from the other party. Is there some way in which banning gay marriage would inherently strengthen Republicans over Democrats? (Going with this because it was presumably the grandparent's example.)
throwanem 10y ago
The undivided support of the state, which has a legitimate interest in helping make it possible for stable, settled families to produce new generations of citizens and thus to perpetuate itself. From the perspective of any system of rule, this is the purpose of marriage. Homosexual partnerships, which are incapable of producing children, thus are of no benefit to the state, and can only be an unproductive diversion of funds which otherwise would be allocated to the benefit of heterosexual marriages which can and often do produce children. In the case where it's considered desirable to ensure that homosexual partners receive the same benefits of familial status (e.g. the commonly cited hospital visitation rights), without also including such partnerships in the financial benefits of heterosexual marriage, a federal civil union statute would easily suffice. Such things have been proposed many times, but invariably have been shot down from the left, rather than the right, as representative of "second-class citizen" status, just like "whites" and "coloreds" water fountains - a risible claim, especially in light of e.g. GLAD's explainer [1], in which, discounting the two already disposed of here, every reason cited in favor of "gay marriage", and against civil union, is at its base about money. Such, at least, is the primary reason why I oppose the idea of "gay marriage", to say nothing of the Supreme Court's having recently discovered in the Constitution that there exists an inalienable right to same. This puts me in an apparently contradictory position, being that I am myself homosexual, but that contradiction exists only in the presence of an assumption that identity politics are the only valid sort. Of course, to hear "gay rights" organizations tell it, that is precisely true, and we are not allowed to take a stance such as mine, or indeed any other that fails to correspond exactly with the current party line. To do so is derided [2] or pathologized [3] - or, of course, both. The possibility that we might have evaluated the cases for and against on their relative merit, and made our decisions accordingly, doesn't really enter into the discussion - and neither does the possibility that those who claim to speak and act on behalf of all homosexuals need not have their claims taken at face value by anyone, not even we whom they insist they defend. [1] https://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/cu-vs-marriage.pdf https://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/cu-vs-marriag... [2] http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2013/05/13/bret-easton-ellis-gay-men-magical-elves http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2013/05/13/bret-easton-ellis... [3] http://mashable.com/2014/06/25/internalized-homophobia-lgbt/#L88h0Gx4Gkq7 http://mashable.com/2014/06/25/internalized-homophobia-lgbt/...
- StavrosK 10y ago
  This argument only holds if it also applies to infertile couples, or couples who just don't want children, who also are of no benefit to the state, and does not apply to homosexual couples who want to adopt. Really, you're making a "childless couples shouldn't be allowed to get married" argument and using homosexuality as a proxy for the desire for children. It's disadvantageous to use proxies when the original metric is just as easily ascertained: Just let people get married when they bear/adopt/whatever a child, and not before. I feel that a second argument in there is "marriage is only good for the legal protection of children", but I think that ignores the social aspects, even though I find them backward.

OK, what do anti-gay-marriage people have to gain politically, if they got their way?

cmdrfred 10y ago

The politicians get votes for one.

scintill76 10y ago
So politicians get votes, for promising to ban gay marriages and/or as reward for doing it? In other words, representative democracy is working as designed. Right? How is this different from other politicians getting votes for supporting gay marriage? It seems to me the "political gain" argument boils down to something almost meta-political; or of satisfaction/boldness in your tribe "winning", or politicians falsely professing things they know voters want -- these apply to both sides. When I asked, I was looking for something like how voter ID laws are supposedly really written to suppress voters from the other party. Is there some way in which banning gay marriage would inherently strengthen Republicans over Democrats? (Going with this because it was presumably the grandparent's example.)

throwanem 10y ago

The undivided support of the state, which has a legitimate interest in helping make it possible for stable, settled families to produce new generations of citizens and thus to perpetuate itself. From the perspective of any system of rule, this is the purpose of marriage. Homosexual partnerships, which are incapable of producing children, thus are of no benefit to the state, and can only be an unproductive diversion of funds which otherwise would be allocated to the benefit of heterosexual marriages which can and often do produce children. In the case where it's considered desirable to ensure that homosexual partners receive the same benefits of familial status (e.g. the commonly cited hospital visitation rights), without also including such partnerships in the financial benefits of heterosexual marriage, a federal civil union statute would easily suffice. Such things have been proposed many times, but invariably have been shot down from the left, rather than the right, as representative of "second-class citizen" status, just like "whites" and "coloreds" water fountains - a risible claim, especially in light of e.g. GLAD's explainer [1], in which, discounting the two already disposed of here, every reason cited in favor of "gay marriage", and against civil union, is at its base about money. Such, at least, is the primary reason why I oppose the idea of "gay marriage", to say nothing of the Supreme Court's having recently discovered in the Constitution that there exists an inalienable right to same. This puts me in an apparently contradictory position, being that I am myself homosexual, but that contradiction exists only in the presence of an assumption that identity politics are the only valid sort. Of course, to hear "gay rights" organizations tell it, that is precisely true, and we are not allowed to take a stance such as mine, or indeed any other that fails to correspond exactly with the current party line. To do so is derided [2] or pathologized [3] - or, of course, both. The possibility that we might have evaluated the cases for and against on their relative merit, and made our decisions accordingly, doesn't really enter into the discussion - and neither does the possibility that those who claim to speak and act on behalf of all homosexuals need not have their claims taken at face value by anyone, not even we whom they insist they defend. [1] https://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/cu-vs-marriage.pdf https://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/cu-vs-marriag... [2] http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2013/05/13/bret-easton-ellis-gay-men-magical-elves http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2013/05/13/bret-easton-ellis... [3] http://mashable.com/2014/06/25/internalized-homophobia-lgbt/#L88h0Gx4Gkq7 http://mashable.com/2014/06/25/internalized-homophobia-lgbt/...

StavrosK 10y ago
This argument only holds if it also applies to infertile couples, or couples who just don't want children, who also are of no benefit to the state, and does not apply to homosexual couples who want to adopt. Really, you're making a "childless couples shouldn't be allowed to get married" argument and using homosexuality as a proxy for the desire for children. It's disadvantageous to use proxies when the original metric is just as easily ascertained: Just let people get married when they bear/adopt/whatever a child, and not before. I feel that a second argument in there is "marriage is only good for the legal protection of children", but I think that ignores the social aspects, even though I find them backward.