There's an opportunity cost. I expanded on that a few days ago, and rather than rehearse it again, I'll link the answer I gave to "What do anti-gay-marriage people gain?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12933668
>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.
i think you're completely wrong here. Homosexual couples do adopt children and given the number of children in the foster care one can see how a homosexual couple adopting an existing child may be of even bigger benefit to the state/society/planet than a heterosexual couple producing a brand new child.
Like with most of the "liberal/progressive" agenda - ecology/climate, marijuana legalization, education, healthcare, social safety net, death penalty abolishment, equal gay and others rights, etc... - i wish to think that this is we, humans, becoming morally better, yet it is also very easy to notice that when the wide society accepts those ideas it is almost always correlates ("correlation is no causation"?) with the fact that at the time of accepting of the given idea that acceptance is economically more beneficial than the not-acceptance. Well, better carrot than the stick...
A commonly cited argument, to be sure. Let's look at the magnitude of its impact in practice. Per federal statistics, roughly five hundred thousand US children are in foster care, which is roughly two-thirds of a percent of children in the US, or six per thousand. Figures on the number of children adopted by homosexual couples are somewhat harder to come by, but the highest number I found cited by a pro- group calls it about 22,000, which works out to about 4.4 percent of children in care, or 26 per hundred thousand of all children in the US.
Does this benefit seem likely to outweigh the cost to the other 99,974 children and their families? Does it justify a federal transfer of wealth from those families - who, given the fashion by which the tax benefits we discuss are distributed, will tend toward the lower end of the income scale - to those homosexual couples already wealthy enough to consider adoption and be likely to gain approval?
There's an argument to be made that these figures aren't representative because homosexual marriage is so new, and will increase over time, and that's fair. Let's look at the best possible case. Roughly 1.5 percent of the US population identifies as homosexual. (We disregard self-identified bisexuals in this analysis; when they make up their minds, they all but unanimously settle on heterosexualism.) Out of call it 240 hundred million Americans, if every two homosexuals equate to one marriage, we have 1.8 million couples. With half a million children in care, to reach full coverage, the overall adoption rate among those couples needs to be a bit more than one in four.
Does this seem likely? That's four orders of magnitude, and roughly a factor of three thousand, over the general adoption rate - and if we disregard intercountry adoptions, as we have throughout this discussion and properly should here, it becomes more like a factor of five thousand.
I do not dispute that homosexual couples, unable themselves to produce children absent extensive scientific and medical intervention, are more likely than others to adopt. But five thousand times more likely?
The essential difference I see isn't one of individual probability of parenthood, but of aggregate. Not all heterosexual couples rear children, true. But the likelihood of a randomly selected example rearing children is vastly higher than that for a randomly selected homosexual couple. That, I argue, is what makes it worthwhile for the state to support the former and not the latter.
To go into individual personal detail, as you seem to think I advocate, might in theory be a natural corollary of what I describe - but to do so in practice not only massively increases the bureaucracy and cost involved and brings in creepy edge cases, but requires a panopticon state in order to work.
Okay, but why guess? We already register children and parents, so only issue marriage licenses when a couple has a child. That takes the guessing out of it.
> but to do so in practice not only massively increases the bureaucracy and cost involved and brings in creepy edge cases, but requires a panopticon state in order to work.
I don't see how, the state already knows who a child's parents are.
As I've just mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think a lot of this has origin in my failure to make clear that I'm not arguing one vast change in the status quo versus another, but rather arguing one vast change in the status quo versus no such change. (Status quo ante at this point, of course, but let's not get hung up on that point, when we've spent the entire conversation to date assuming that this is still a question meriting discussion.) Making marriage contingent on procreative capacity would be a vast change to the status quo. Permitting homosexual couples to marry, exactly as heterosexual couples do, is also a vast change to the status quo. There are cases in which vast changes to the status quo are not merely justifiable but utterly necessary. This does not seem to me to be such a case.
What about them? By your logic, won't be able to get married, unless they adopt, since they can't have kids, it's clear-cut.
> What about men and women who simply aren't fertile, for whatever reason?
Same, no marriage, unless they adopt.
> What about families in places where births aren't registered? Such places still exist.
Can't get married unless they register their kids. We can't have them benefitting from the institution of marriage if they aren't willing to do the legwork.
> What about the death of a couple's only child?
Could go either way, they gave it a shot. I'd be for letting them stay married.
> What effect has all this on divorce?
I don't know, what effect does not letting homosexuals get married have on divorce? Same deal.
> "Creepy edge cases."
Not really, though, they have pretty easy answers.
> And I can't see how maintaining all this additional information on which married status is now contingent (unless it's not!) could be achieved without a massive increase of bureaucracy, with its concomitant cost.
What's the additional information? It's literally "do you have any children? yes/no", which the state already has. You're literally advocating guesswork instead of using one simple and readily available piece of information.
I don't know, these arguments are so bad that I feel like you're trying to avoid recognizing that my solution is clearly superior. It makes me wonder what the real reason for you being against homosexual marriage is.
Civil discourse usually ends by presenting your clearly superior points and letting the weight of their clear superiority carry the day.
Questioning what the real reason for [him] being against homosexual marriage is an "Ad hominem fallacy".
Yeah I feel like you're post-rationalizing a gut feeling, because you didn't think too hard about alternative solutions to the incentives/tax burden problem.
That's actually closer to what I'd consider preferable, which would be no changes to existing marriage rights, but a federal civil union statute with marriage-level financial benefits contingent upon child-rearing. But such a thing would never be taken seriously on either side of the political crevasse - far too much for conservatives, far too little for progressives, thus decried from both sides. Is it too soon to bemoan the equation of nuance with assault in the modern American political environment?
> deny one of humanity's oldest and most important rituals [...] to an entire group of people
An entire group of people who have never in Western history, perhaps not even in human history overall, had access to that ritual, until the Supreme Court last year discovered in the Constitution a right heretofore unknown. It is very hard to overstate the extent to which this represents an upheaval of tradition, and such things don't happen in a vacuum - or, utopianism notwithstanding, without consequence. Being myself a member of that roughly one percent of the population which has been led to believe it may enforce its will upon the whole without fear of backlash, I don't think it is too hard to imagine what kind of "gut feeling" there might be somewhere in the back of my mind as I speak on this subject, as I've so often done over the last few years.
It's possible my analysis lacks accuracy, although that's yet to be demonstrated, and falling back on insinuations of bigotry doesn't really indicate confidence in one's arguments. But if you want to know what motivates me to concern myself with the subject in the first place, you need look no further than fear. I don't want to find myself in a war, and I really don't want to find myself in a war my side is all but guaranteed to lose - and one in a hundred isn't the kind of proportion that's conducive to a win. But some people seem to want to start one, and to put me and mine in it. They say it's for our benefit, but I've been observing and comparing their claims and their actions for some decades now, and I think they are lying. I also see no reason to expect that, when all the heavy things they've so blithely flung into the air start coming down on people's heads, they'll feel any need to stick around and share the horror they've let us in for. That seems to me like an outcome toward which it's eminently reasonable to look with trepidation.
We'd got by this long without being able to marry. We could've been satisfied with Lawrence v. Texas, which is an amazing accomplishment in its own right, and given it another generation or two before we told the rest of America again that it could take its morality and shove it even further this time. No, that's not ideal, but what is? Nobody ever promised us, or anyone else, an easy life. Nobody ever promised us a just world, by our lights or anyone else's. And the whole concept of progressivism revolves around gradualism, or so I'd been given to understand - the idea, I gather, being that of modifying morality over successive generations by a process mainly centered on education and subtle social pressure, rather than forcible reengineering of whole swaths of society at a time. Quibble though I may with the nature of such a process and the purposes to which it might be put, I at least have to admit that it has a reasonable chance of working. Trying to do everything in the space of half a generation like this is liable to get a hell of a lot of us killed, and to leave those who aren't worse off than they were at the start. I guess that's easy to contemplate for people who don't stand to suffer as a result of it. Here on what's liable to be the pointy end, maybe not so much.
I don't know about gradualism. You seem to have a better eye on the strategy than me, so I'll take your word for it -- though I'm struck by your cynicism about allies fleeing you when things get hard... but I can understand where it comes from. The number of people who would put themselves in harms way for someone else's fight is pretty low, so your numbers indeed look bad. Damn. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I hope for all our sake america isn't as dogmatic and lazy as you think it is..
so, according to that principle you declared, the state clearly shouldn't support marriage (no new marriage licenses and no tax benefits to the childless couples with already existing licenses. Shouldn't the state just automatically annul the existing licenses of such couples?) after the age of 50 or 55 - i.e when that likelihood fells below whatever threshold you consider "worthwhile".
This should sate the religious (they can have their marriage rules and do whatever they want they just wont have legal standing, we aren't calling the legal union a marriage anymore). It should also fix your issues.
In any case, the legal advantages are things that make it easier to live together permanently. As far as I'm concerned, if we moved to my proposal you should be able to get a civil union just for that reason.
So, if two best friends or roommates want to have a civil union because it makes their life easier have at it. If irreconcilable difficulties occur, then they can sever the union in court much like today's divorces.
If it helps any, I hardly more often find myself in agreement with conservatives on most issues than with progressives...
Why is that a legitimate interest of the state?
Cynically you could argue that the state benefits far more from dysfunctional families who are more likely to become dependant. I would rather the government spend money on sex education and contraception for teens than supporting married couples.
Your cynical argument has value as well. The trouble is that the only even temporarily stable state thus produced is a single-party state, and you can't really kick everyone off the dole once you've finished using it to get where you want to go. It's an ongoing cost whose magnitude is only ever likely to grow over time, and the probable economic result is frightening.
And do you really want to equate homosexuality and infertility, which for all intents and purposes is a medical disorder? Is that where you want this conversation to go? It's not where I want this conversation to go. My sexuality is not a medical disorder.
As I've argued at length in this thread and the comments I've linked therein, I don't think it's reasonable to consider that standard met here.
As I've tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to point out, this isn't the same as arguing that permission to marry should be contingent upon procreative capacity. I can see how it might come across that way, from a starting perspective of weighing one vast change to the status quo vs. another such vast change, and I think I've failed adequately to clarify that I'm approaching the question instead from a perspective of weighing one vast change to the status quo vs. no such vast change. It's a different question.
You're also characterizing this as a "vast" change. What is the vast change here? From a logistical perspective, it doesn't exist: you pass a law allowing same-sex couples to do the exact same thing that opposite-sex couples can...and now they can go do so using exactly the same procedures as opposite-sex couples could before, and obtain thereby exactly the same benefits (tax advantages of joint filing status, visitation rights, and a host of other small preferential treatments given to married couples).
Speaking of those benefits: while they exist, it is categorically impossible to uphold equality of rights and opportunities while opposing same-sex marriage. The only to reconcile these two positions is to either a) pick one or b) redefine marriage such that it confers no civil benefits (which would indeed be a vast change).
> You're also characterizing this as a "vast" change. What is the vast change here?
That marriage should now be an institution open to homosexual couples as well as to heterosexual. Taken in isolation, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, either. But nothing in society exists in isolation, and quite aside from the historical novelty of it, many millions of people regard this particular change as a very big, and very undesirable, deal indeed.
The impression I have is that those with whom I've argued the point here today see no reason to doubt that they know better than those many millions who share this opinion - so much better, in fact, that there's no point taking very seriously any argument, opinion, or belief, other than that which they themselves advance, espouse, or profess - or at least already agree with on all substantial points.
I was that confident once, too. Sometimes I miss it. But nothing is ever simple, and pretending otherwise can make fools of us all.
Also you quoted me in your response, but your comments made no argument against my quote. Care to shed light on why people you don't know getting married deprives you of something?
1: http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/marriage-compa...