Same-Sex Marriage

Comments

1. 

   December 21, 2005

   Richard

   I have not seen Norm faulted before, but I am with you on this issue.
   On the wider issue of marriage, I do not agree with you that same-sex partnerships should have the same benefits as marriage. The difference is more than about sex, it is about what sex is for, namely survival. With declining birthrates, an aging population and greater longevity our society and culture is in trouble, and the kind of trouble that it has not known for millenia. The baby bonds that Gordon Brown has just introduced are a trivial adjustment to the major hit that he has made on family economics and hence on birthrate, compounding a prior strained situation where both parties to a marriage feel bound to work in order to make ends meet. We cannot keep importing cheap labour and expect our culture not to change dramatically. Marriage and family are the foundations of all societies for more than just cultural reasons, they are so for evolutionary reasons and we tinker with them at our peril. This is decadence, and our descendents will damn us for our vacuous folly. On this the Muslims have got it right, Sharia law, anyone?

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2. 

   December 22, 2005

   marc w.

   Well, I’m with Norm.
   I don’t understand why a dictionary definition should be seen as the final word on the subject. Definitions reflect current usage; that it isn’t ‘a matter of convention’ as you put it is in fact the legal issue that we’re discussing. That’s why Norm saw your post as question begging.
   Is it unreasonable to assume that a dictionary definition of voting in 1850 or so would have made refence to ‘the process by which the men of a polity or state choose representatives or governmental actions’ or something like that? If it did, would restricting the franchise to men be wholly appropriate, as the definition clearly states that there’s something intrinsically male about this voting business?
   ‘The meaning of the word’ marriage seems like an irrelevance here – the policy or act the word describes is either moral or not, fair or not; let’s talk about those moral issues, and not rely on the definition like it’s a totem that supersedes moral judgment.

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3. 

   December 22, 2005

   P. Froward

   man emperors and fashionable modern New Yorkers. Nice people, maybe (Tiberius more so than the average art-scene hipster), but there’s just not a lot of ’em.
   The “dictionary definition” was accurate, is why it’s arguably worth mentioning.
   Then again, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” raised a few eyebrows, too. Not saying the two cases are precisely parallel, just that institutions have been reinvented in the past, and we got away with it (whether the Eurofetishists like it or not). And the issue at issue here is really just a quibble over terminology: I don’t think you’re suggesting that “civil unions”, legally identical to marriage, aren’t a good idea. The argument is only whether the law should use the same word to describe the two.
   Most importantly, is it realistic to imagine that retaining the traditional definition of the “M word” in the law will so us any damn good at all? The birth-rate crash is happening, willy-nilly. Roughly the same changes in our culture are responsible for that as for the gay marriage thing. Nobody was suggesting this stuff fifty years ago. Our definition of marriage has changed; it’s not about providing for kids any more, it’s about “self-actualization” or some idiotic thing. The law can follow, or become irrelevant. You might as well order the tide back. If I thought that a minor lexical inequality in the law would save civilization, I’d sign up in a minute, but it won’t. It can’t. So why not let the queers use the M word too? Why the hell not? These are normal people who pay taxes like the rest of us. I mean, as “normal” as anybody, which isn’t very. If we’re going to hell anyway, which we are, let’s do it in a gracious and orderly fashion.

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4. 

   December 22, 2005

   Paddy Carter

   I think I’m with Norm, although such is the degree of hair splitting involved, it’s hard to tell.
   Mick you say: “As with the race analogy, so with the voting analogy: yes it does matter that the definition of marriage includes reference to two sexes. That’s my whole point. It isn’t a matter of convention”
   But isn’t the definition of marriage itself a matter convention?
   It may be a firmly established convention, but it’s not in the same category as the definition of ‘water’, for instance. We can adjust the definition of the word (concept of) marriage to include same sex unions, and maintain its continuity and usefulness, in the same way as the meaning of countless other words have evolved over time. Objecting to this change, on the basis that it entails changing the meaning of the word, is clinging to convention, isn’t it?
   Didn’t the definition of democracy once include reference to gender and status? That got changed OK.
   What’s the alternative? Decide that the word marriage can only refer to union between man and woman, and invent a new word (I nominate ‘quijibu’) for same-sex unions (definition: exactly the same as marriage, but same-sex). Can we then invent a third word that refers to marriages and quijibus, which we can use as shorthand for both? I nominate ‘marridge’.

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5. 

   December 22, 2005

   Clive

   Tatchell’s other interesting point is that civil partnerships aren’t available to heterosexual couples who don’t want to get married.
   But Mick’s argument seems circular reasoning to me. Surely what’s at issue – where this whole debate comes from in the first place – is what is meant by ‘marriage’, and the entirely justified complaint that it is unfair that heterosexual couple X can have their relationship officially sanctioned, but I can’t do the same for my 14 year same sex partnership. (Not that I’m going to, actually, at least not this year). You can argue that doing it this way – not calling it marriage – is a clever way of avoiding an unnecessary row; maybe it is. But I don’t see how it’s meaningful to pretend that the whole thing doesn’t challenge, precisely, the definition of marriage as such.
   (As a poster above is saying – I think – Mick’s taken-for-granted definition of marriage is any case surely quite historically and culturally specific. Not sure polygamous cultures would see it in the same way, for instance).

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6. 

   December 22, 2005

   P. Froward

   Traditional definitions (of course there’s more than one) of marriage aren’t arbitrary. These are practical institutions that evolved for a purpose.
   Likewise: Assuming that McDonald’s milkshakes really are made out of edible plastic, why should we not call them “food”? Well, you could argue that, for a very long time, we ate for the sake of nutrition rather than because we were bored. Again, a refusal to call those things food won’t change our eating habits at all, so you may as well go with the flow.

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7. 

   December 23, 2005

   wardytron

   I agree, of course, especially with this: “changing the meaning of words, and claiming that those who object must be prejudiced or clinging to convention, is not in my opinion an argument whose logic cannot be faulted”. Matthew Parris would also agree with this. There are loads of other questions and issues tied up in this, eg to what extent should legislators be able or permitted to change the meaning of words, and to what extent should custom or tradition or prejudice be allowed to determine our laws.
   What interested me was the idea that, if marriage had never existed and was just about to be invented, there probably wouldn’t be a stipulation that the parties should be of opposite gender. But that doesn’t mean that we should change or abolish the current definition. Just as, if we were building a new political structure for a new country, we probably wouldn’t include an hereditary chamber, but that doesn’t mean that the House of Lords should be abolished.
   But I think the real homophobes will die out and gays will end up marrying, and that will be fine, eventually.

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