I guess Tim Cook and Brendan Eich don't see eye to eye on some issues.
How is that even possible? How is enforcing legal restrictions against a minority class of people not inherently discriminatory?
Marriage comes with specific rights and obligations (like, presumably most controversial, adoption and "importing" spouses into the country). Somehow society makes rules for who gets those rights and obligations. Would you say for example everybody should have the right to import people into the country? For example why don't I get the right to bestow citizenship onto people whom I really like - do I need to fuck them to prove I love them? Isn't that discriminatory? Or why stop at gay marriage - what about polyarmory?
I am not against polyarmory, but suppose I have 100 lovers all over the world and I want them all to become US citizens? Why can't I just marry them all?
Maybe it would be fair if every citizen would get the license to bring n people into the country, no matter if married or not?
Again, I am not against gay marriage, I just want to demonstrate that there can be aspects that can be argued about.
I don't know enough about adoption to comment. Can everybody adopt children? Or do you have to prove you are a healthy couple, or wealthy enough, or whatever? Personally I think once you argue homosexuals are not fit to adopt, you would have to consider all other sorts of criterions as well (for example surely many heterosexual couples are not fit to have children, or less so than some homosexual couples). Adoption is complex, though.
So this in itself is not an argument; while I acknowledge that this is something that can be argued about, a lot of the arguing on this subject is extremely bigoted and misinformed. As is illustrated by this trio's harsh encounters with a number of government agencies that stick their heads into this arrangement and meet them with an incredibly hostile skepticism.
I wonder how many kids live with two dads, one of them their biological one? I would expect the circumstances leading to that situation to be very rare.
Anyway I don't want to argue in favor of the anti-marriage crowd, just point out that some arguments can at least be related to, even if they are misguided. Unfortunately we can not shut misguided people out of politics (or so it seems).
That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a homosexual relationship is a legal restriction, which really doesn't make sense. I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
You're also assuming that discrimination is an inherently bad thing; it is, of course, not. Discriminating between a green and a red light is a pretty useful survival skill whilst driving, for example. Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful; there's a difference.
My own personal view is that marriage is a religious matter, and that the State should no longer recognise it at all. If two men want to say that they're married, that's their right, just as it is mine to declare myself Grand Vizier of the Martian Republic—and no-one should be compelled by violence (which is what the law ultimately is) to heed either them or me.
How does adoption in general work? For example it can happen through "natural causes" that a child has only one dad and no mother. It seems likely that having two dads would be better than just one. But if somebody wants to adopt, they might have to be "better than average"? Like would a single dad have a good chance of adopting? Or does some office consider the likelihood of a child's wellbeing in a family - so presumably they would try to find two parents, not just one, which is discriminatory against singles? And then if the "adoption office" (or whoever is responsible) has the choice between a heterosexual and a homosexual couple, things become difficult?
My cousin has 4 kids, and is married to the love of her life Lisa. Their kids are certifiably the kindest, most considerate kids I know. There's been no psychological damage, at least not at their hands. Ignorant outsiders may say mean things but to blame that on these excellent parents would be twisted logic.
Anywho, the decision about adoption is so far down the road from marriage as to be a red herring.
But I think you are wrong about adoption. I think it's one of the main concerns opponents of gay marriage have. What other rights would people be concerned about? The other one I can think of is the right to bring your spouse into your country.
Are people going to the barricades because they don't want gays to be able to visit their partners in hospital? I rather doubt it. Adoption is one of the big issues.
I think, because the argument is thrown up semi-randomly - See! They might adopt! That would be awful! Just another red herring, saying anything at all that might convince a voter to strike down the right to marry.
People who continue to make this argument are ignoring a very well-established conclusion in the social science research.
I'm not really well versed in the typical pro and contra arguments, so this made me curious.
The moral argument against homosexual pseudomarriage is that it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about marriage. Marriage is not about a couple's (or a group's) feelings about one another. It's not a way that society shows approval. It is, rather, the formation of the most basic unit _of_ society (I'd argue that the individual is not really a unit of society), and is the means by which children are produced and brought up.
(And yes, there's plenty of heterosexual pseudomarriage too)
But, given that these are all moral arguments, my preference is for the State to absent itself entirely rather for it to take a side and do further damage to an almost destroyed institution.
In fact, if marriage is 'almost destroyed' as you posit, then we need more, new styles of family if kids are to have a chance to grow up fed and clothed and loved enough.
When it is a product of specific exclusionary provisions of the law, in the application of legal recognition of a relationship defined in law, then it is a legal restriction.
> I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
The rules governing the manner of succession to the British crown and the people who are eligibile to that succession most certainly are legal restrictions, and they most certainly are legal restrictions on most of the people in the world (even if it is a restriction where most of the restricted people don't care.)
> There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
Er, no, its not. Marriage is a legal status. The legal effects of the status are central to the issue, not a side issue.
> Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful
Perhaps, but (a) why should we believe that in the general case, and (b) given the legal effects of marriage, why is marriage specifically an appropriate and valuable venue for such discrimination? About the only legal effect of marriage that is specifically directed to reproduction is the legal presumption of parenthood in which a spouse is presumptively (either rebuttably or conclusively, depending on jurisdiction) assigned parental responsibility for any children produced by the other partner. Arguably, the value of that is largely in providing an assurance that dual parental legal responsibility will be assigned in the absence of any effort to establish (in rebuttable presumption jurisdictions) or independently of (in conclusive presumption jurisdictions) the facts of biological parentage, which is as valid in a same-sex partnership as in an opposite-sex partnership.
Its also kind of interesting as a libertarian view, since marriage is essentially just a convenient prepackaged contractual relationship regarding property rights in the broad sense, and recognizing and enforcing contracts and their impact on property rights is one of the few things that libertarians generally agree is a proper role of government.
What were the right-libertarian views on marriage in the US prior to that? I'd be surprised if there were libertarians with radically different views.
> Its also kind of interesting as a libertarian view, since marriage is essentially just a convenient prepackaged contractual relationship regarding property rights in the broad sense, and recognizing and enforcing contracts and their impact on property rights is one of the few things that libertarians generally agree is a proper role of government.
I think the general view is that those contracts should not require a "stamp of approval" from the government and should instead be done privately and be enforced like any other contracts. Of course, in practice, a lot of laws would have to be rewritten to get rid of marital status.
Edit: I can't comment due to rate limits, but a poster below hasn't read what I wrote above and is suggesting I am saying the men grew up in different times. I am suggesting the exact opposite: they grew up in the SAME period/culture.
Off topic, it kind of bothers me that I got mischaracterised and couldn't reply for such a long time due to the silly HN rate limit.