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But infertile opposite-sex couples could always get married...?
Such as...?
I have a pet analogy I've been using for over a decade on this point, and I recently encountered a term that helps better encapsulate what said analogy is gesturing toward: "ordered toward"
Consider hand grenades. Then consider a movie prop "grenade" that looks like the real thing, but isn't. The law treats those two things very differently, and for a clear and obvious reason: real grenades explode, fake movie props don't.
But, one might argue, some subset of "real" grenades are "duds": due to manufacturing defects, the effects of time, or whatever, don't explode when you release the spoon. But the law makes no effort to carefully identify and separate out the duds, to be classed with the movie props as "non-explosive" — instead, it classifies them with the fully-functional grenades. Therefore, the law can't actually be about "explosive vs. non-explosive," and the line drawn between real and movie-prop grenades is illegitimate and should be removed.
Of course, most people would likely reject this argument. The key is precisely the phrase I spoke of before: ordered toward. A real grenade is ordered toward exploding — even if, thanks to our living in an imperfect, entropic universe, some subset fall short of that purpose — while a movie prop is not ordered toward exploding. For a "dud" grenade, the "non-explosiveness" is incidental, accidental. For the look-alike movie prop, the non-explosiveness is inherent.
In short, this is an argument that teleology can constitute a valid "joint" upon which reality may be "cleaved," particularly when it comes to law.
(It continues to dismay me how many secular people firmly accept the creationist philosophical principle that "purpose" requires a conscious purpose-giver, when an important element of the theory of evolution by natural selection is that it provides an explanation of how an undirected, atelic process can produced directed, telic entities. The usual rejoinder people make, when I argue this, is to conflate the process of natural selection with the products of natural selection; which, as I like to say, is like confusing tennis shoes with a tennis shoe factory.)
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Testing for fertility would be an extremely invasive process that is also rather error-prone, both points being especially damaging when applied at scale to the entire population. Continuing to not condone same-sex marriage implicates none of this, as the state can simply look at the 'sex' field in the government-issued documents that the government already has, which is not at all invasive in light of what is already required of marriage applicants. This 'gotcha' was never anything more than an ill-thought-out 'gotcha'.
It's especially silly wrong when one considers that there are actually situations where, believe it or not, the state requires individuals to show that they're infertile in order to get married. That is, in many states, close relatives are allowed to get married if they can show that they are infertile (they would otherwise be prohibited from marrying). This reasoning follows pretty simply from the idea that the state is using marriage policy to encourage responsible procreation as well as the dual objective, discourage irresponsible procreation. The state acknowledges that there are strong liberty and privacy reasons why they cannot simply ban sex between close relatives, but thinks that such activity leads to irresponsible and dangerous procreation. Perhaps one might think that it is enough of a deterrent to simply remove the stamp of 'marriage' from such couples (though on your theory, one can't imagine what the grounds of such a move would be in the first place), but it has actually long been recognized that the state can go even further, using marriage policy to incentivize such couples to perhaps even pursue sterility by artificial means. Obviously, such a goal does not exist for homosexual couples; they seem to be just irrelevant for the purposes of marriage policy. There is no plausible way to argue that since the state uses marriage policy to encourage close relatives to sterilize themselves rather than procreate irresponsibly that they must somehow also incentivize homosexual relationships for no apparent reason.
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That the law was over broad for its purpose is not a killer argument. Many laws are over broad for their intended purpose. Also for much of history this wouldn't be a worthwhile inquiry for the state.
Disease control. Encouraging procreative coupling.
I don't particularly care what the interests of the state are, in terms of whether or not I'm for or against something. Hell, in plenty of situations, like privacy or free speech, the interests of the collective state and that of its individual citizens are diametrically opposed. So much the worse for the state, is/ought distinction etc.
That being said, the Spartan state encouraged homosexuality as a male bonding exercise, so it's hardly unheard of.
What it is, is irrelevant, from the perspective of whether citizens should tolerate it.
Same. I oppose homosexuality for my own private reasons which are non-religious, but are mildly aligned with the state's interests.
You might well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
There is some evidence they encouraged some forms of M-M sodomy, but not obligate homosexuality as encouraged by the majority of gay advocacy groups in the current day, and certainly it would be a practice entirely orthogonal to a marriage between men, which would run afoul of even the Spartans IMO twisted position.
Well, we are talking about the state issuing marriage licenses. This sort of comment is like saying, "whether the secretary of state refuses to give blind people driving licenses is irrelevant to whether citizens should support blind people driving!"
Well the crux of the issue is whether the existence of gay marriage is causing "harm" to the majority of the other citizens. That's certainly false for the strict standard of harm my libertarian side espouses.
If they aren't bussy-blasting you, hypothetical (and the odd real ones around here) person who disapproves, suck it up. Err.. Not quite that way, but I applaud your spirit!
No? The Crux of the question is whether the state is interested in gay relationships because they cause some sort of complication that we think we need to deal with. With heterosexual pairings, we think we need to deal with responsibility for those children. That is pretty much the state interest. Whether there is some harm is not the point. The point is having standard rules for standard things.
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Sure. The argument was about "why should the state care?"
It's consistent to say that the state should advance one set of values that serves their interests, while private citizens are free to hold other values that have nothing to do with state interests. E.g. the state has an interest in having a strong military and may choose to valorize soldiers with medals and memorials and holidays. Meanwhile private citizens may choose to adopt different values that don't glamorize dying in war.
I gave you an example of a state advancing homosexuality for what can be described as the sake of the state.
Idk about you, but I expect, being the citizen of a representative democracy, and likely to become a citizen of another one, that the state does its level best to align itself with the desires of the majority of its citizenry.
To be clear, I don't actually agree with the argument. "The state" in my view is barely a coherent concept as an actor - it's more a vehicle that various groups fight to control than a thing with its own desires (and to the extent it has its own desires they tend to be narrow "more money for our department" desires). I agree that in the real world governments usually take moral positions as a marketing exercise. If there's lots of religious conservatives, ban gay marriage. If there's lots of secular liberals, fly rainbow flags everywhere.
I was simply trying to redirect the argument back to the actual point of contention.
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Determining whether a couple is infertile in general is much harder than determining whether a couple is gay. It is entirely reasonable for the state to not want any marriages which do not produce children, but to allow the ones that it can't trivially detect.
The state can go fuck itself, frankly, if I ever get married or have kids it won't be to shore up the state. One wonders what's even the point of a state that places its own nebulously defined interest above that of its subjects.
Would that the pro-gay-marriage camp shared your disdain for state sanction. As it stands, forcing everyone else, including the state, to recognize gay "marriage" was an explicit goal. Partly, this was because state sanction included some obvious benefits, such as end-of-life care decisions, intestate succession, tax status, etc.
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Right, I think the argument that sterile couplings in general are socially bad is weak - it's very hard to see how a widowed man and woman marrying in their 60s hurts society.
The core objection to gay marriage - whether admitted or not - is that homosexuality specifically is bad, and I think attempts to abstract away from this are disingenuous.
My own view of the issue is that homosexuality is a disability. I don't think less of anyone for being disabled, and I don't begrudge them finding their own way to best live with their disability. But it seems perverse to me to celebrate disability. People advancing pro-LGBTQ stuff feels similar to me to the deaf people who want their kids to be deaf too. And to the extent that sort of thinking takes over society as a whole, it's bad because it means we've lost the ability to see that having a properly functioning body and brain is a good thing. We're becoming disconnected from what should be obvious reality.
So I come down on the side that the best outcome is for society to tolerate homosexuality (whose practitioners are mostly unable to change their own desires) but not to celebrate it (whether through marriage recognition or rainbow flags or propagandistic representation in popular media or whatever). People should be allowed to be weird, but being gay should be seen as weird.
So you support the modern Russian and Hungarian policy towards homosexuality? Nobody has managed to thread the needle on ‘freedom for gays, but not celebrating and promoting it’ yet. The closest is probably the eastern euro countries where public homosexuality has legal restrictions(eg no pride parades, can’t be out to minors) but there are no sodomy laws.
The closest in my opinion is Japan, in which public homosexuality is tolerated to the extent that it conforms to longstanding dramatic/performance norms (eg okage). Private homosexuality is permitted but not encouraged and generally considered shameful. The vibe as I understand it is "be gay if you have to, but keep it to yourself".
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That seems to be the position of most of the "conservative" sorts I know IRL. As one crudely but pithily summarized it: "I don't care if you're gay, just don't be a fag about it."
This is also the attitude of the conservative Texans I personally know. Homosexuality is tolerated, faggotry is not.
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Well, they could always be made to adopt orphans, and at least some gay or lesbian couples go through the trouble of surrogacy.
The orphans aren't already in enough trouble?
I find most of the assisted reproduction creepy.
I'd rather have a 50% of being sexually abused as a child than counterfactually not exist, frankly. I think most people, if they were honest, would agree. This makes banning gays from having assisted-reproduction children ... extremely stupid, imo, and the morality that leads you to believe it must be prevented extremely suspect. (Its' still fine to think gays are evil or whatever, that can coexist)
He said "most of the assisted reproduction", it doesn't specify that it should be banned for gay people. Personally I think it should be banned for everyone.
Once in a while, when we talk, you end up saying something like "how do you not realize I'n far-right". This is how. I don't see how there's anything morally suspect about wanting to stop the fertility industry.
I said 'most' , to allow for assistance to the soldier who'd had his cock blown off but still wants kids with his wife. It should be rare enough to avoid the industrialization of reproduction. Only if he's still alive. 'Harvesting' sperm from the dead is creepy, but I understand the motivation.
Homosexuals should be banned from assisted reproduction, if they want children they should make them themselves like the rest of us. Although I'd prefer they didn't especially those invested in the ideology of alphabetism. I don't think they should adopt either. Orphanages would be better.
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Well you know what they say, the future belongs to those who show up. But you do you.
Do you have a galaxy-brained take on curious straight's true allegiance? He may be a progressive heretic in far right clothing, but I'm sure his progressive friends would think he's far right, and that's good enough for me.
Sure, but even if you're right, there are certain points past which I don't recognize the result as "having shown up". For example I sympathize with DaseIndustries Transhumanists more than I do with Bay Area Rat Transhumanists, but both are so distant from me that I can't see myself having a direct stake in either one of them winning.
But none off that matters, as the question was about morality, and this is not a moral argument.
Yeah my personal theory about how he showed up here was that some California Bluehair called him a racist, and he said "Very well... I see that I do not belong here... I shall go live... with the racsists!"
You can have him, but I don't want his views associated with me. They're like someone deliberately set out to miss the point.
That is the weirdness of such arguments. What will showing up prove? That you were morally right, that you have retroactively won in a hypothetical future none of us will know? It strikes me as the inverse of : 'in the past, we all lived in a communist pacifist matriarchical cooperative', but even less subject to contrary evidence. Ownership of the past and future need not concern us. The future is a foreign country.
Neither does the Bluehair. Are you going to deny him his identity and his far right card, unless he goes trad? If you object to his characterization of himself on definitional grounds, that's one thing, but if you're just gatekeeping and trying to up the social pressure as a political act, I must object under freedom of association.
As far as I'm concerned, he can always tag along on the road to Bremen, where we shall sing for our bread.
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I literally said "it's still fine to think gays are evil" in the next sentence, man, I'm not being subtle here. The point is even then, the right response isn't "prevent harm".
Right, and I think whatever the harm is, it's better to have more people who can experience things (and more rolls of the dice for higher-quality people, etc)
Well, but that's my point. You're acting like a progressive's parody of a conservative.
Not everyone goes by a utilitarian "minimize harm" morality. Turning reproduction into an industry is an evil in itself, one of the greatest ones that are out there, in my opinion.
EDIT: Sorry I must have missed this one:
I mean, you are still using a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. You're saying it's worth to roll the dice on the harm, because the expected benefits are greater. My point is that industrializing a fundamental human experience like birth is already wrong in itself, and arguing in favor of it with "we might get a few more von Neumans" doesn't work on a fundamental level.
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No to both, not that I can particularly comment on what you consider creepy.
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