Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective
qntm.org
qntm.org
When I was writing code for a medical facility, the guy who designed the database was as straight-laced and socially conservative as you'll meet.
But his design handled same-sex marriage/bigamy/polygamy/transgender issues, etc.
(It was a mental health facility. You get all sorts of interesting data problems when tracking the outliers.)
His philosophy on the design --and I'd imagine this isn't so odd amongst geeks-- was that data was data and needed to be tracked in a proper and robust manner, regardless of rightness or wrongness or personal feelings.
Assuming a male/female table is a reasonable logical starting point because 'some people feel this way' is akin to suggesting redundant christian/muslim/dirty_atheist tables would/should be expected to occur in professional code, because 'some people feel this way'.
Their other labels are just attributes stored in fields in the people table.
The simplest solution is actually the most robust. Any specialization adds complexity and rigidity.
Truly, an obliteration of any meaning to the word "marriage."
Really, I think we should start over. What is marriage, in the eyes of the state? Why should it grant special privileges to encourage it? Does society reap benefits from having a man and a woman committed to each other? Does it benefit from having eight people of varying sexes and self-declared genders semi-committed to one another in varying degrees? Are we prepared to draw a line somewhere and - gasp! - judge some unions better than others?
If we don't have widely-accepted answers to that, maybe we should stop recognizing marriages legally, substitute designations like "this person can make decisions for me if I'm ill," and leave marriage to be a religious designation only.
That just isn't doable in this age of "Everyone is equal" political correctness stupidity.
It'd be like saying that black people on average are better at basketball than white people! Which is clearly racist!!!
Though, if there was (as I envision it) a state-based 'civil union' that conveyed those benefits, and also 'marriage' which was purely church-based and conveyed no benefits legally (though of course those getting married would also file for a 'civil union') I might skip out on the church part.
Redefinition depends on how far you want to go to deconstruct the term "spouse". In addition to making decisions when you are ill, how about "adopting my children", "inheriting my property (and debts)", or "becoming my common-law spouse after 6 month's co-habitation", or "perhaps not in my church but ok in another one", etc?
After a certain point you either have to draw a line, ie "sorry, you can have this much dignity and no more", or you eventually accept the strong form of gay marriage. Anything else would be politically unstable. You can, politically, rule out polygamy and define marriage as "two people". It doesn't have to lead to chaos and anarchy.
For a long time homosexuals liked to claim that at least 10% of the population is homosexual. That is what I suspect you are quoting. However that claim doesn't have good support. But figures that I have seen peg the rate of people who are primarily homosexual much lower than that. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Demographics for some random figures. From that list the number I would quote for the USA is 4%.
However if you look at it differently, much more than 10% of the population cares. According to polls almost half the electorate thinks that gays should be allowed to marry. And a lot of non-homosexuals agree that the issue is important. So supporters of gay marriage aren't limited to gays.
My personal feeling is that consenting adults should be allowed to enter into any consensual arrangement that they wish. Therefore I am fully in support of allowing both gay marriage and polygamy, even though I have no desire to engage in either lifestyle. I should be clear on this. My position on polygamy doesn't come from my position gay marriage. They both come from more fundamental beliefs. But I suspect that as more people become familiar with the idea of polygamy as they have with the idea of gay marriage, that there will be a growing acceptance of it. And as an example of this I'd offer the changing opinions in Canada. First gay marriage became accepted, and now polygamy is becoming accepted.
So while logically polygamy doesn't flow from gay marriage, I think that the opponents of gay marriage are correct that acceptance of gay marriage is a step towards the likely future acceptance of polygamy.
Marriage goes far beyond a contract or power of attorney; for example, spouses have Fifth amendment protection. As you said it depends on where people finally agree to move the line to. I personally suspect that a "strong formulation" of gay marriage would be the most stable.
Denying one group rights because you fear what some other group might want is dishonest even if the premise is true. Giving former slaves rights made society more likely to give women those same rights, and all the same crap arguments were used then, too.
All of that is academic anyway. Rights are not given, they are demanded. Once polygamists constitute a significant constituency they can fend for themselves. Otherwise, leave 'em out of the equation.
I just wish the State would use another term and leave the term "marriage" to the churches. If some/any church wants to "bless" your social union as a marriage, then cool. I am kinda on the conservative side, but if someone else wants to have a "triple" union - I don't really care as long as it isn't some genetic travesty (siblings / cousins).
IOW, it's not simply about reproduction. I'll reconsider taking that claim seriously when its proponents suggest that sterility should be a diqualification for marriage licenses (for extra credit, they can call for revoking marriage in cases where sterility sets in afterwards). Until then, I can only conclude that reproduction is an excuse to distract from their real reason.
I recognize that what you posted was not necessarily your idea on the subject, hence "its proponents," rather than "you."
The real issue IMO is how religious institutions portray history. When one of your sacred "Just So" stories portrays the creation of the institution of marriage it's easy to think of anything else as a perversion sacred law, even if such things are far older than your faith. EX: I once had someone defend their faith by saying “How else do you explain Adam’s missing rib?” That’s a world view so intermixed with their faith there is no way they can understand a secular viewpoint.
What argument would you use to defend gay marriage that would not also allow polygamy? Or what argument would you make against polygamy that wouldn't also apply to gay marriage?
So I'll repeat the question: can you state your real argument in favor of gay marriage?
Note: I'm asking why you favor it, not why you feel it is politically feasible.
Why are you trying to bring his personal opinions into play?
Sp332 and myself want to hear an argument for gay marriage which does not logically lead to legalized polygamy. Aristus is arguing that gay marriage will not politically lead to legalized polygamy.
"Marriage is an institution with the primary purpose of providing a good environment for children and their biological parents. We only permit sterile straight couples to get married to promote the illusion that marriage is about love and happiness for the married couple. Since a polygamous household is not a good environment for children, we ban polygamy."
Continuing in the tradition of stating opinions that are not ours but are potentially interesting:
One could argue that at the time these laws were made, checking for sterility was impossible and is now potentially prohibitive or inaccurate as medical science improves.
The most one can do is show that some more generally accepted subjective value implies the a specific subjective value. A more general argument: "any act performed in private between consenting adults is morally acceptable. This implies gay sex is OK."
(That's also a specific example of a general argument which most proponents don't actually believe. See this comment thread for an example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806581 )
2) State-recognized marriage is not a right. Like copyright, it is the granting of certain privileges, at the expense of the state, with the expectation that the state will benefit. You have a human right to write books and songs, and you have a human right to choose a partner. Separately, the state may have laws to encourage those things. A law recognizing gay marriage is not saying "you're equal with everyone, you can drink from the same water fountains." It's saying "we encourage gay marriage. We want to incentivize it." What is the case for that? Seems like it should be a sociological, economic one.
2) Yep. In this case I mean rights as in "water rights" as opposed to higher-order natural rights. Pragmatic reasons to encourage gay marriage are largely the same as for regular ones: married people live longer and are generally more happy. Stable households mean stable communities. Sensible distribution of estates. More homes willing and able to adopt the millions of kids who need them. Etc. Procreation is not the entire or even the most important reason to encourage households.
Unfortunately those arguments don't hold water with people who think being gay is immoral in and of itself.
Any society that accepts and encourages gay marriages is committing suicide.
I'd also question whether "people seriously agitating" is a good way of determining whether a particular action is right or necessary, as it's the lack of agitation caused by fear that allows discrimination (against any small minority: geeks/nerds, races, genders, etc.) to exist for such a long time before finally being addressed.
Polygamist have basically the same rights as gay people: They can't marry (in most countries), but nobody forbids you from screwing around (or even loving) multiple partners.
Reasonable restrictions on marriage include being under age and certain close relations.
Polygamy isn't a relaxation of a restriction of marriage, it is expanding the concept. For example, if I am in a coma, my wife can make medical decisions for me. If I have two wives, what if they disagree? If two people are married, must they both agree on bringing a third into the marriage? What if one person from a three person marriage wishes to leave?
None of these questions arise with gay marriage. The closest gay marriage comes to these problems is that it exposes the inherent sexism in child custody issues, since with two men there's not a mother involved who the court can presume is the better parent.
As a libertarian, in theory I favor getting the state out of the marriage business, but in practice, marriage is a useful bundle of rights and responsibilities. That is, it's a standard contract between two people. We should make it possible for larger groups to enter into agreements granting the kinds of rights that marriage grants, but there is nothing discriminatory about saying that the state provides a standard simple contract for two-person marriage but if you want more than that, you'll have to see your lawyer.
From a database perspective, there's no reason the Washington state database needs to track gender. It needs to track who's involved in the legal relationship and what legal rights they have regarding each other's person and property. (If we wish to make things more complicated by allowing arbitrary graphs for relationships, we need to write the laws governing those rights more carefully.)
But, I agree with other posters here. While MMDDYY was indeed pervasive, I've seen very few DB designs that assume role/gender at the schema level. That said, I would not be at all surprised to find logic or 'validation' that would choke on "MM" or "FF" or "was M but now F".
Y2K made lots of consulting firms (as well as retired mainframe programmers) quite profitable during 1998-2000. Here's to new opportunity. :-)
role Person { has qw/age height weight serial_number/ }
class Man with Person { has 'length' }
class Woman with Person { has 'size' }
class ... # whatever else people can be
# assume index on "does Person" set
my $bob = $db->get_person('Bob'); # isa Man
my $harry = $db->get_person('Harry'); # isa Man
my $sally = $db->get_person('Sally'); # isa Woman
# i think there was a movie about this
txn_do {
my $m = Marriage->new( people => [$harry, $sally] );
$harry->add_marriage( $m ); # in real life, there is a trigger on $m->add_person that does this
$sally->add_marriage( $m );
$db->store_marriage( $m ); # harry and sally are stored too
};
# didn't work out.
$m->annul( on => DateTime->now );
$db->store( $m );
$harry->is_married; # false
$harry->has_been_married; # true
$m2 = Marriage->new( people => [$bob, $harry] );
...
$harry->is_married; # returns $m2
my $tom = $db->get_person('Tom');
$m2->add_person( $tom ); # "three way"
...
Design your systems flexibly, with a reasonable lack of assumptions. If society moves past your system, fix it.
I have one name. Very few online forms have ever allowed me to leave first or last blank. I generally try to get away with first-blank, last-filled in, and then surrender as appropriate.
What's worse, I think, is online groups where only one person can be known by a particular name. Stupid. How you call yourself should be unrelated to how the database needs to identify you uniquely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem
In general, the stable roommate/gay marriage problem does not always have a solution.
Because the pool of marital age humans is constantly growing (and changing) the stable straight marriage problem can pretty much be considered insoluble :)
Huh?
I suppose that it depends on what you mean by "try out". Obviously you can't live with each of those pairings for 15 years.
Most people seem to find breakups rather painful.
Dating 10+ people in one's life is normal, obviously.
You know that not all gay people prefer all other gay people? If a gay man prefers a gay woman, we call them straight.
That's why the stable marriage problem is non-trivial. If all men preferred all women equally, any set of marriages would be stable.