The State and a Definition of Marriage

[Peter_Plato]

They would not have the legal right! So the state is the entity that grants the right to procreate. Talk about trumping natural law. It’s simply outrageous. Would unmarried couples be required to use contraception every time they are intimate or otherwise risk the possibility of being subject to investigation by the state?

I think it worth noting the Drivers Ed teacher’s favorite phrase, “Driving is not a right, it’s a privilege.” Is marriage, then, a privilege? According to US Supreme Court rulings, marriage is a right.

What makes it a right?

It is much more than a privilege, it is a huge commitment with often overwhelming responsibilities. The problem is many individuals who enter into the state today do not get that. They believe it is their right, period.

 

[Peter_Plato]

So, would you deny legal recognition to all unions which could not produce children?

They wouldn’t have legal status as marriages, but some other status could apply.

What about marriages which reach the point that they are no longer procreative?

Once licensed the marriage would go on until “death do us part.” The understanding is that a procreative union carries on through its children after procreation ceases. There would be no relinquishment because the biological life of the couple carries on through their children.

I suppose legal status goes away, at that point in time. Who will police this? Annual fertility tests, and quizes on sexual practices?

The legal status wouldn’t go away. I did not say a marriage license should be a temporary one. In fact, the understanding would be the marriage license would last until death as it is supposed to even now.

What if a couple uses contraception? Should it be illegal to manufacture, prescribe, or sell any contraceptive device or drug?

That is an entirely different issue.

They have a license to become a procreative couple because they have the potential to be. Whether they actually do so or not is not the state’s concern. Once you have a driver’s license the state does not monitor to see that you actually do drive. The couple is merely licensed to take on procreation whether they actually do or not is up to them.

I am not clear you understand my position.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Contraceptives would only be illegal for married couples to use with each other. Single people would be free to use them at any time, while married people would be free to use them with any partner they were not married to.

rossum

Is there some prohibition in Buddhism regarding dishonest or unfair portrayal of another’s position?

 

[Peter_Plato]

They would not have the legal right! So the state is the entity that grants the right to procreate. Talk about trumping natural law. It’s simply outrageous. Would unmarried couples be required to use contraception every time they are intimate or otherwise risk the possibility of being subject to investigation by the state?

Are you saying that unmarried couples should have a right to procreate?

So what precisely is the point of a marriage license now?

It appears to be quite meaningless since unmarried couples, according to you, have a “right” to produce children and they would equally have a right to break up with no strings attached. Why are marriage licenses even a necessity other than for taxation purposes? Even then, not required, as common law relationships are recognized.

What precisely is their value?

Do you think the state has no right to protect children of biological unions from harm? How do you propose that is to be done and still provide some manner of state support?

 

[epan]

They wouldn’t have legal status as marriages, but some other status could apply.

Once licensed the marriage would go on until “death do us part.” The understanding is that a procreative union carries on through its children after procreation ceases. There would be no relinquishment because the biological life of the couple carries on through their children.

The legal status wouldn’t go away. I did not say a marriage license should be a temporary one. In fact, the understanding would be the marriage license would last until death as it is supposed to even now.

That is an entirely different issue.

They have a license to become a procreative couple because they have the potential to be. Whether they actually do so or not is not the state’s concern. Once you have a driver’s license the state does not monitor to see that you actually do drive. The couple is merely licensed to take on procreation whether they actually do or not is up to them.

I am not clear you understand my position.

I think I do, pretty well, and I wholeheartedly reject it.

 

[rossum]

Is there some prohibition in Buddhism regarding dishonest or unfair portrayal of another’s position?

I was protraying my own thoughts on the logical consequences of the position you seem to be taking. If the state is to confine procreation to licensed marriages only, then anything that reduced the amount of procreation not within such a marriage is furthering the ends of the state.

And a suplementary question: does the couple get an automatic divorce when their youngest child reaches adulthood?

rossum

 

[Slavonic]

Are you saying that unmarried couples should have a right to procreate?

So what precisely is the point of a marriage license now?

It appears to be quite meaningless since unmarried couples, according to you, have a “right” to produce children and they would equally have a right to break up with no strings attached. Why are marriage licenses even a necessity other than for taxation purposes? Even then, not required, as common law relationships are recognized.

What precisely is their value?

Do you think the state has no right to protect children of biological unions from harm? How do you propose that is to be done and still provide some manner of state support?

Yeah, couples have right to procreate without the state’s interference. In fact, the right to procreate was also upheld in a court ruling involving forced sterilization. So my point has basis in reality.

You saw the history of marriage licenses. Sometimes they were used to enforce racial purity. Other times they just seem to be a bureaucratic process to ensure the orderly establishment of the marriage. What a marriage license is not is some kind of permit analogous to a drivers or boating license.

Also, it’s not necessarily so that having unmarried parents does harm to a child. You’re assuming too much.

There are already child protection laws to ensure children are properly cared for when an actual child exists, not notional potential offspring…

 

[odile53]

Since, according to the Catholic Church, the purpose of marriage is dual–unitive as well as procreative–infertile marriages are just as valid as marriages which generate a dozen children. It is within the interest of the state that one party of a unitive-only marriage is not left destitute if the marriage ends in civil divorce (don’t want to have a lot of elderly ex-spouses suddenly thrust on public assistance when mutual material support is one expectation of marriage.) Remarks made about infertile marriage, relegating them to second class status, are hurtful and not at all in line with the teachings of Christ.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Yeah, couples have right to procreate without the state’s interference. In fact, the right to procreate was also upheld in a court ruling involving forced sterilization. So my point has basis in reality.

You saw the history of marriage licenses. Sometimes they were used to enforce racial purity. Other times they just seem to be a bureaucratic process to ensure the orderly establishment of the marriage. What a marriage license is not is some kind of permit analogous to a drivers or boating license.

Also, it’s not necessarily so that having unmarried parents does harm to a child. You’re assuming too much.

There are already child protection laws to ensure children are properly cared for when an actual child exists, not notional potential offspring…

My initial point was to propose a reason why the state should be involved in issuing marriage licenses. What has been argued and made consistently obvious by numerous others is the state has no legal reason to apply a definition of marriage because any definition it applies could be declared unconstitutional.

The state has no interest in a definition of marriage because

1. No fault divorce laws have shown the state unwilling to treat marriage as a contract since either party can nullify the agreement without “fault.”
2. Lax abortion laws have removed the state from its role to protect offspring. And as you have pointed out being married does nothing to protect offspring. In any case child protection laws exist to “protect” children.
3. Redefining marriage as a “loving relationship” is vague and legally meaningless.
4. Taxation rules apply to partnerships and declaration of dependency does not require biological relationships.

The point is that the state has absolutely no legal reason or jurisdiction to declare marriage as anything since its justifications for “being in the game” in the first place have been all but removed.

Since it has no power or jurisdiction left to it to declare whether anyone should be “married” in the first place, and since such a declaration would be against someone’s civil rights, then it has no justification left for making a determination about what “marriage” is or is not. Redefinition of marriage by the state would seem to be an arbitrary exercise, not something the state has any real interest in.

 

[JimG]

Not every marriage is procreative, but every marriage between man and woman is sexually complementary. That sexual complementarity enables marital intercourse which is ordered toward procreation, whether it ever in fact produces a child or not.

Same sex couples can never be ordered toward procreation, any more than a man and his TV can be ordered toward procreation.

Same sex marriage is simply a fantasy which society seems poised to impose on all of us as a required fiction, with non-belief being the ultimate sin. Married men and women will be required to pretend that their union is the same as a homosexual union. Of course, it isn’t. It’s as though Amtrak required us all to refer to their trains henceforth as “airplanes” for the sake of transportation equality.

It will render marriage meaningless, and in so doing, very likely make it more infrequent. It will require us to lie about marriage at the expense of civil penalties. And finally, it will undermine true marriage and destabilize the social structure.

 

[Bradski]

The point is that the state has absolutely no legal reason or jurisdiction to declare marriage as anything since its justifications for “being in the game” in the first place have been all but removed.

Yet you said earlier:

The state can’t get out completely because the rights of children to be responsibly raised by their biological parents would be at risk.

So they have to stay in the game to protect the rights of children. This is the legal definition of marriage that most people would accept:

The legal status, condition, or relationship that results from a contract by which one man and one woman, who have the capacity to enter into such an agreement, mutually promise to live together in the relationship of Husband and Wife in law for life, or until the legal termination of the relationship.

Where’s the part that would put at risk ‘the rights of children to be responsibly raised by their biological parents’ if the definition was changed? Or is there another legal definition to which you can refer? I can’t find one that mentions children.

It will render marriage meaningless…

Will it make yours meaningless, Jim? Ask your wife.

…and in so doing, very likely make it more infrequent.

That’s opinion, Jim. And the facts of the matter in countries where same sex marriage is allowed show the opposite. But maybe you can point to something that will back up your opinion?

It will require us to lie about marriage at the expense of civil penalties.

This is a new one on me. How would this work?

And finally, it will undermine true marriage and destabilize the social structure.

Now it can’t very well undermine something that has been rendered meaningless. You’ll have to go with one or the other.

 

[lllj]

Bradski, I think what Peter Plato is basically saying is that what he’s proposing should be the state’s role in marriage, not that it is.

To some extent, it makes sense - why exactly is it necessary that the government gets involved in our personal sexual relationships? Peter Plato argues that it is to protect children.

Problem is, the reality is that children are born out of wedlock all the time, infertile couples get married, etc. So this doesn’t do a whole lot for the argument against same sex marriage.

 

[Giants]

I’ve long argued that the simplest solution to the SSM debate is for the government to stop issuing marriage licenses altogether. Just issue civil union licenses. Anyone that wants to be “married” need only find a church willing to perform the rites. And as time goes on, there will almost certainly be more and more churches will to marry SSCs.

 

[silenced]

Heterosexual couples are part of a class of people who are fertile by design. Homosexual pairings are part of a class of people that are always non fertile by design. There is no analogy.

Homosexual, or lesbian, or gay couples are not by definition infertile. They simply cannot procreate together as same-sex couples. They can adopt or they can opt for in vitro. I am not condemning or condoning these acts; I just thought I’d give you a biology lesson.

 

[Stephen168]

Homosexual, or lesbian, or gay couples are not by definition infertile. They simply cannot procreate together as same-sex couples. They can adopt or they can opt for in vitro. I am not condemning or condoning these acts; I just thought I’d give you a biology lesson.

Adoption and in vitro do not make a same-sex couple fertile.
Stephen168;10107603:

In vitro fertilization requires egg cells and sperm cells.
Your boyfriend does not have egg cells.
Therefore, by design, as a couple, you and your boyfriend are sterile.

 

[fix]

Homosexual, or lesbian, or gay couples are not by definition infertile.

Their acts are always sterile. They lack complementarity.

They simply cannot procreate together as same-sex couples.

That is no small matter. It is central to the entire issue.

They can adopt or they can opt for in vitro. I am not condemning or condoning these acts; I just thought I’d give you a biology lesson.

Their acts are still sterile by design. Adoption and illicit techniques do not change anything. Just thought I would give you a lesson in logic.

 

[fix]

Adoption and in vitro do not make a same-sex couple fertile.

Even the most obvious facts must be pointed out these days.

 

[fix]

I’ve long argued that the simplest solution to the SSM debate is for the government to stop issuing marriage licenses altogether. Just issue civil union licenses. Anyone that wants to be “married” need only find a church willing to perform the rites. And as time goes on, there will almost certainly be more and more churches will to marry SSCs.

That is what the left wants. One more way to desensitize the culture.

 

[JimG]

Homosexual, or lesbian, or gay couples are not by definition infertile. They simply cannot procreate together as same-sex couples. They can adopt or they can opt for in vitro. I am not condemning or condoning these acts; I just thought I’d give you a biology lesson.

They may be fertile; they may be capable of marital relations. If so, they are perfectly capable of actual marriage–i.e. a union with a person of the opposite sex. Thus, nothing is being denied them.

Marriage itself has nothing to do with homosexual relations. It can exist only between couples who are sexually complementary. Marriage bonds husbands to wives, parents to children, children to mothers and fathers. Destroying marriage inevitably is destructive to children.

 

[fix]

They may be fertile; they may be capable of marital relations. If so, they are perfectly capable of actual marriage–i.e. a union with a person of the opposite sex. Thus, nothing is being denied them.

Marriage itself has nothing to do with homosexual relations. It can exist only between couples who are sexually complementary. Marriage bonds husbands to wives, parents to children, children to mothers and fathers. Destroying marriage inevitably is destructive to children.

I find the entire argument that compares infertile heterosexual couples to same sex pairings as disingenuous. There is no real comparison at all. In fact, I think heterosexual people should start calling out this type of thing as hateful and demeaning. Take a page from their book.