What’s missing from Elizabeth’s argument
| November 27th, 2004Elizabeth at the Family Scholars Blog writes:
This is the problem. I’m not opposed to SSM because of the couples who want to marry. I understand their desire. I know what love is. I know what it means to want to grow old with somebody. I know the fear of being alone.
My problem is that I don’t want all marriage and family law, across the nation, to be rewritten in gender neutral terms that make the law unable to affirm that children, whenever possible, need to be raised by the mother and father who gave them life.
First of all, I’m happy that Elizabeth calls me her friend - and I’m quite sure she has feelings. :-)
As for gender neutral marriage, we’ve been moving in that direction for quite a long time; more wives and mothers work, stay-at-home-Dads are increasing (although still a small group), and coverture laws are an archaism. I’m curious to know if Elizabeth would like to undo any of the previous legal steps towards gender-neutral marriage, and if so, which ones.
Elizabeth goes on:
Here’s how I’d sum up the argument in the above paragraph (Elizabeth was nice enough to confirm by email that my paraphrase is accurate):
- If SSM is allowed, society will be less able to affirm the importance of being raised by two bio-parents.
- This will likely result in more heterosexual parents either never marrying, or marrying and then divorcing. (This is what Elizabeth means by “more [children] will grow up lacking that key security”).
- Therefore, we should not allow SSM.
For the sake of this post, I’m going to ignore my disagreements with statements 1 and 2 (and trust me, they are legion). Instead, I want to point out that something’s missing from Elizabeth’s argument. 1 and 2 do not logically lead to 3. There’s something missing - a step between 2 and 3 which justifies the conclusion in step 3.
For example, let’s look at one possibility - let’s call it 2.5.
2.5 Whatever leads to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced, should not be legal.
If we add that, then 1 & 2 logically lead to 3. 1 & 2 together establish that SSM will lead to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced; 2.5 establishes that everything that leads to more unmarried bio-parents should not be legal. Once that’s established, then Elizabeth’s conclusion - that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed - logically follows.
But it’s fairly obvious that Elizabeth - like most opponents of SSM - does not really believe in statement 2.5.
After all, if “whatever leads to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced, should not be legal,” then Elizabeth should logically want to refuse to legally recognize divorce. She should logically favor coverture. She should also be against legal interracial marriage, since interracial marriages are among the most likely to divorce.
It’s safe to assume that Elizabeth doesn’t favor banning divorce, or banning interracial marriage, or bringing back coverture laws. But if Elizabeth doesn’t favor those things, then Elizabeth doesn’t beleive everything that makes it less likely that bio-parents will get married and stay married should not be allowed by law. Which means that she can’t fill in the gap in her argument with statement 2.5, or anything like it.
I think Elizabeth must be using some method of categorization to fill in the gap in her argument. Some things - such as the Marriage Initiative, which I think Elizabeth favors - are acceptable ways of promoting marriage. Other ways - like refusing to legally recognize divorce - are not. And, in Elizabeth’s view, legally recognizing same-sex marriage falls into the “acceptable” catagory.
Putting aside the SSM question for a moment, my guess is Elizabeth’s categories look something like this:
| Category A - Things the government MAY NOT do to discourage unmarried bio-parents | Category B - things the government MAY do to discourage unmarried bio-parents |
|---|---|
| *refuse to recognize interracial marriage *refuse to recognize divorces *bring back coverture *refuse to recognize marriages of the infertile and the elderly *refuse to recognize second marriages which create stepparents (that is, non-biological parents) *throw non-resident parents into prison *refuse to recognize marriages to prisoners |
*create marriage education programs *create legal benefits for married people *allow marriage to create American citizenship *use the “bully pulpit” to talk up marriage *supply free marriage counseling for couples in trouble *support research into what makes marriages strong |
There’s a genuine pattern here, I think. Elizabeth and others would like to use the government’s powers to make it more likely that children will be raised by their own, married, biological parents. However, there’s a general consensus - even, I think, within the marriage movement - that some ways of doing this (category A) are unreasonable and shouldn’t be pursued. No one at the Institute for American Values (Elizabeth’s employer) is suggesting that we bring back coverture or outlaw divorce, for example.
So what differentiates category A from category B? The general principle seems to be that although the government should encourage childrearing by married bio-parents, in the name of the common good, it shouldn’t do so at the expense of removing civil rights or endorsing outright discrimination.
Instead, the government is allowed to use the methods in category B: the government can cajole, the government can persuade, the government can educate.
Here’s what puzzles me: I’m sure that Elizabeth would agree that the government should be doing a lot to encourage a society in which more children are raised by married bio-parents. I’m sure that she would also agree that some means of doing this are acceptable, and some are not. I suspect that if she made a list of acceptable and unacceptable methods, it might look pretty similar to my two lists above.
It seems obvious to me that refusing to recognize same-sex marriage belongs in catagory A, similar to refusing to recognize divorce, refusing to recognize interracial marriage, and so forth. But Elizabeth must think it belongs in category B, similar to providing tax breaks and marriage education programs. And I genuinely don’t understand why.
This is, I think, the issue I’d like to see Elizabeth address - the missing piece of her argument. She clearly doesn’t favor everything the government could do to reduce the number of divorced bio-parents - for instance, she doesn’t favor the government refusing to legally recognize divorce. So I’d like to know the rules she uses to catagorize things which are, and things which are not, acceptable ways for the government to encourage married bio-parenting; and why refusing to recognize same-sex marriages belongs in the “acceptable” category.
P.S. Many thanks to “Alas” reader Tina for emailing me a solution to my table formatting problem!
November 27th, 2004 at 4:05 am
Well, it’s not necessarily illogical to support some efforts to keep child-rearing in the hands of bio-parents and to not support other efforts.
I mean, if one supported the 55 mph speed limit on the grounds that it reduced the number of accidents and dependence on foreign oil, that doesn’t mean one should necessarily have supported a speed limit of 0 mph, which would really have cut down on accidents and oil consumption.
However, in this case it’s certainly odd to have a sudden interest in the virtues of bio-parenting to emerge in a general corner of opinion (I do not know if Elizabeth shared these other views, but then she’s not the only bio-parent advocate) that for so long has been advocating adoption as the alternative to abortion.
They’d be on stronger grounds if they expressed a concern that children should be raised by both a woman and a man rather than by one sex alone. But the number of children raised by single parents vastly exceeds the number raised by gays, and some of those causes of single parenting should have anybody concerned about this issue up in arms.
In particular, the lengthy deployment of the military in Iraq is causing great numbers of effectively single parents, and that’s even not counting the troops who don’t come back at all.
We also have the interesting fact that prohibiting gay marriage isn’t preventing gays from raising children.
This comment was written by Simon.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 4:26 am
You’ve got two paragraph tags before that table. I think that accounts for the big space. One at the end of the sentence right before the table and one in front of the table.
This comment was written by Tek.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 6:20 am
Tek - Nope, that’s not it - I got rid of the tags and it doesn’t help.
Simon - I agree. But one should be able to explain why one favors the 60mph limit and not the 10mph limit. If one can’t explain why the distinction between the two, then one’s argument is lacking.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 6:36 am
Every time I pop in on your blog, you make the most reasoned, logical arguments on this issue. I wish more people were hearing things worded the way you say them. They are the kind of calm, rational arguments that often cause someone with the opposing view to stop for two seconds and realize that they hadn’t thought of it that way. Nicely done. From now on, when someone asks me my opinion on this subject, I should just say, “Go read what this guy has to say.”
By the way, I think it’s possible you have the “May” and “May Not” in your above table reversed. Unless I’m REALLY not understanding your argument. :)
This comment was written by Amy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 8:13 am
Aren’t Category A and Category B switched in the table?
This comment was written by Dylan.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 8:21 am
Thanks, Dylan and Amy. I’ve made the correction. :-)
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 9:45 am
The problem isn’t one of rejecting or accepting SSM. The problem is a philosophical one: do we embrace an essentialist view of marriage and family, or a constructivist view?
If we have a constructivist view, then there is no particular reason to reject (or accept) homogamy; if people want to do it and get utility thereby, they should do it, otherwise not. I gather that people want to do it, so in constructivist-world, there’s no need for further discussion.
If we embrace the essentialist view, then there is similarly no discussion. Marriage is by essential definition the union of a man and a woman, the end. It doesn’t matter if you want to do it or not or what the social matrix says or does; fish don’t fly.
So the conflict seems to be between people who have a constructivist view and people who have an essentialist view. The discussion always bogs down and gets nowhere, because no logical argument that a constructivist makes changes the philosophical impossibility of SSM to an essentialist. All the logical arguments made by essentialists rely in the end on a bedrock appeal to a perceived reality in which the essentialist position is necessarily true; no constructivist is moved by such arguments.
About the only time a conversion is made, it’s of someone who doesn’t have a firm anchor in either philosophical approach. A weak essentialist who never really bought the crux of the matter will be persuaded by the happy experience of her gay friends that SSM is OK; a waffling constructivist comes around to the notion that some things are built-in and immutable, and reluctantly concludes that SSM doesn’t fly. (That’s me.) These are marginal conversions, however; they are available to only a sliver of the population.
Constructivists cannot convince essentialists, and essentialists cannot persuade constructivists. The only peaceful solution is exile or segregation.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:05 am
The missing 2.5 is really, when you dig under the nicey-nice language, a pretty far-reaching and ugly variety of sexism. That is, the assumption that traditional gender roles are a) unchangeable and b) so important that NO same-sex couple can possibly meet a standard that is allowed for ANY opposite-sex couple.
There is really no other explanation for Elizabeth’s blessing of a legal scheme that allows marriages we absolutely know to be harmful to children, and blesses those marriages in every state in the union, as long as they are opposite-sex; yet points to nonexistent evidence of ‘harm’ to say that same-sex couples may not marry.
It’s kind of you to give Elizabeth the benefit of the doubt, Amp, but I don’t see any point in crediting her for her mushy insistence that she “understands” what same-sex couples want out of marriage. She’s still insisting that their civil rights be sacrificed purely for her to preseve the warm, fuzzy feeling that a Mars-and-Venus worldview bestows upon her.
Of course, if Elizabeth *does* support returning to coverture, abolishing all no-fault divorce, and so on, I owe her an apology.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:05 am
Marriage is by essential definition the union of a man and a woman, the end.
The problem with this is I have never heard a good argument for WHY marriage is “essentially” the union of a man and a woman. Especially not an argument that has any place in the discussion of a government-sanctioned licensing process. “Because it just is,” is at best a weak argument. Even the language in the Bible on the subject is sketchy, and this is a book written almost 2000 years ago, so I’m not sure why we continue to use it as a measure of how to live modern lives.
But then, as you may have guessed, I fall into your category of constructivists. :)
This comment was written by Amy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:08 am
I think you’ve done an excellent job of pointing out the real question, which is how to draw the line between Category A and Category B.
Speaking of drawing lines, I think the table will show up properly if you get rid of all those <br /> tags in it–dunno about your browser, but mine assumes that any line breaks inside a table must be inside a cell, which must be inside a row, and inserts extra cells and rows accordingly.
This comment was written by Q. Pheevr.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:09 am
I think you’ve done an excellent job of pointing out the real question, which is how to draw the line between Category A and Category B.
Speaking of drawing lines, I think the table will show up properly if you get rid of all those <br /> tags in it–dunno about your browser, but mine assumes that any line breaks inside a table must be inside a cell, which must be inside a row, and inserts extra cells and rows accordingly.
This comment was written by Q. Pheevr.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:11 am
Oops–sorry about the ddoouubblle ppoosstt..
This comment was written by Q. Pheevr.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:14 am
I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you for the use of an ARGUMENT–with premises and a conclusion! :-) I’m a grad student in philosophy and thus I firmly believe in the power of logic and arguments. Unfortunately I find that many other people don’t seem to hold much respect for these at all. Thus I doubt Elizabeth or most SSM opponents would be impressed with your analysis–but I certainly am!
This comment was written by activistgradgal.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:17 am
Outstanding post.
On the space before the table, what Q. Pheevr said. After the lead-in sentence, the code includes currently includes eight “br” tags — each one adding a single-spaced line.
This comment was written by FLJerseyBoy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 10:40 am
Well, Amy, I can’t really give you a constructivist rationale to defend an essentialist position. ;)
However, I’ll take a stab at it anyway. Hubris, thy name is Bob.
Marriage is an institution that evolved to protect the vulnerable members of human society: pregnant women and children. In the primitive state, pregnant women and/or young children are not independently viable social units. They require additional support. That support could come from a larger community, but such communities require social capital that might not always be available. The resource that is always available is horny males. Marriage creates incentives for horny males to modify their behavior and to become individually supportive of women and children instead of exploitative. The institution evolved through prehistory and history, always attempting to create good incentives for males to align their behavior with the family instead of the individual.
Marriage evolved with male:female duality as its central theme, not from intentional discrimination, but for reasons of biology. Gay people have reproduced throughout history, but always in the context of male:female; there were no test tubes in the Paleolithic era. Thus, the existence of homosexual attraction and its mainstreaming into the institution of male:female pairing are both part of the evolutionary history of marriage.
Male:female is essential, therefore, because until the present time, male:male or female:female bonding partnerships were nonviable in terms of propagating the species, and thus did not signify in the evolutionary process. Only the survivors signify, and historically the only survivors have been male:female and the product thereof. Marriage evolved as a bonding between males and females, and thus as it stands, it is essentially a male:female institution.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 12:08 pm
Wow, what a great post.
I also like Simon’s point regarding the “biological father/mother” thing coming from folks who hold up adoption as a great option. I’ve often wondered about that.
I *do* happen to think adoption can be a good option for everyone involved, but then, I don’t put much stock in the bio-mom / bio-dad bit.
Sara.
This comment was written by Sara.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 1:35 pm
Bean, polyandry and polygamy have (and do) exist, but they still go to male:female. Nobody said “one man, one woman”; please don’t drag in other arguments, it just makes it impossible to have a discussion.
I’ve never seen any reliable report of historical gay marriage. Please provide cite. I hope you’re not talking about Boswell. His work is interesting but hardly shows SSM; even if it did, those relationships would be part of the dead branch of marriage’s evolutionary tree, because the tradition he studied died out.
As for the purpose of marriage - well, it is true that avoiding the expenditure of time and energy on offspring not one’s own is sometimes part of male reproductive strategy, but not always: I’m currently raising two kids to whom I have no biological tie, despite being married to their mother. In any event, marriage provides no protection in this arena, so providing that protection cannot be marriage’s function. A woman can be impregnated by multiple males whether she’s married or not.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 1:53 pm
Bad Arguments
This comment was written by Lawyers, Guns and Money.I can’t decide if Ampersand at Alas, A Blog is a saint for the time and patience he devotes to refuting bad anti-SSM arguments put forth in various quarters of the blogosphere I have no inclination to visit, or a sucker for being drawn into these par…
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November 27th, 2004 at 2:05 pm
A woman can be impregnated by multiple males whether she’s married or not.
Ah, but under marriage laws, the children born of the marriage are presumed to be the husband’s. I agree with bean; marriage evolved to protect men. And their stuff. After all, originally the wife and kids were considered the property of the husband, and with coverture, the woman essentially entered a legal non-existence similar to that of a child. Unfortunately, since for most of history there were few other options for women, it was marriage, the convent or their parents’ home. Marriage at least conferred some status and worldliness.
The key word, though, is “evolved.” Marriage has not been static over the years, it has evolved and changed, something the anti-SSM forces conveniently refuse to acknowledge.
One thing I haven’t seen in either Amp’s response or the comments is a response to Elizabeth’s fundamentally flawed premise: that marriage is for families with children. That’s just wrong. Marriage is a legal bond between adults; that children born to that marriage receive some benefits does not change the basic fact that marriage, in and of itself, does not exist for the benefit of children.
This comment was written by zuzu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 2:22 pm
I don’t put much stock in the bio-mom / bio-dad bit.
Nor I. Oregon had a couple of notorious cases of “traditional” men murdering their wives and children just in the last year or two. Who knows how many less sensational cases of abuse and murder never even make the paper or the six o’clock news ? There is nothing that grants inherent virtue/superiority to the patriarchal model of mating and childrearing. To suggest that anything does strikes me as both clueless and collossially arrogant.
This comment was written by alsis38.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 2:25 pm
Robert:
There is ample evidence of a long-standing practice of female-female marriages amongst the Nuer tribe (Sudan/Kenya) that involved sexual relations. A google search should turn up a bit more on this. I’ve seen suggestions that there were/are many other African tribes with woman-woman marriages, although the Nuer seem to come up the most often.
Indeed, Anthropologists have presented a wealth of historical evidence of same-sex marriage from various cultures around the world. If you haven’t examined it and found it lacking, you should probably be pretty cautious about assuming it doesn’t exist.
Of course, if very recent history counts as history, it exists in much of Canada and Europe, and they seem to be surviving.
Another note: if you view marriage in evolutionary terms, the evidence is pretty clear it’s evolving in western culture to include SSM. Essentialist and evolutionary views of marriage don’t exactly go together, since evolution implies change and growth, as we’re currently seeing.
This comment was written by djw.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 3:39 pm
Really good post
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November 27th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
My question is how SSM opponents can maintain this argument of bio-mom + bio-dad = best and not shame those of us who have heterosexual relationships and children outside of the marital bond. For that matter, should marriage be accessible to heterosexual couples who choose not to have children?
Whether they like it or not, families like mine will continue to exist, and I’m not sure how they can rationalize this argument without speaking from a place of moralizing shame. And shaming my family structure does my son and I no favor, no matter how they try to frame their editorializing.
This comment was written by Lauren.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 7:39 pm
:::shhh::: No using that nasty, vile l-o-g-i-c. , you’ll only make the poor conservatives go foamy about the upper orafice. PS Check your mail. TheCO
This comment was written by TheCO.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 8:56 pm
historical gay marriage
Again: it’s not “gay marriage”. It’s same-sex marriage. The idea of ‘gay’ is a modern one. I’m not going to get into poststructural gender analysis here, but let’s note that the idea that everybody has to pick one (1) gender with whom to be sexually and emotionally intimate, always forever and that’s how you are, has hardly been universal.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 8:57 pm
Good replies to my points. Thanks for the civility, btw. Your excellent rebuttals do show why the essentialist case can’t really be made well in constructivist terms.
If I can ever stop posting comments on other peoples’ blogs long enough to get caught up with my academic work, I’ll post something self-contained over on my blog, from an essentialist pov. I’ll let Amp know and if he deems it link-worthy we can start a good old-fashioned blog war.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2004 at 9:25 pm
Thanks, Robert, I’d certainly like to know why you take the essentialist position here. It makes sense to take some aspects of reality as given, but to put the meaning of words in this category makes no sense to me.
This comment was written by Omar K. Ravenhurst.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2004 at 7:57 am
Robert wrote:Marriage is an institution that evolved to protect the vulnerable members of human society: pregnant women and children. In the primitive state, pregnant women and/or young children are not independently viable social units. They require additional support.
Robert, there are countless instances in both the primitive world and the animal kingdom where pregnant females and mothers-and-offspring survive quite well without the help of the males, thank you. In fact there are many natural childrearing arrangements in the animal kingdom where females or groups of females are the parents raising offspring, while the males of the species live separately except during mating season - essentially functioning as separate social units. ;)
I’m not arguing we should do away with male-female marriage, of course - but I’m pointing out that there have been myriad natural “alternative lifestyles” extant for ages - and the Noah’s Ark myth of the universal dyadic “momma-poppa-baby” arrangment simply isn’t so universal.
There are a multitude of “natural” family situations observable in the field, but history has shown that the reason traditional marriage evoloved was not for the protection of the ‘weak’ females and children, but rather for the purpose of ensuring that a male had certitude his offspring would share his genetics, as well as to provide legal ownership of both his wife (or wives) and children and patrinlineal succession.
Protection of women and children would seem to have been a secondary somewhat more self-interested consideration, as in many cultures the “paterfamiliias” had the power of life-or-death over wives and children, and had authority to punish or kill them at will - hardly a provision designed for the protection of women or children.
While I concede these are examples of the harsh extremes of traditional marriage, and certainly not exemplary of male-female marriage as a whole, in modern society the essential economic hunter-gatherer provider-childbearer roles of the genders are not that relevant - or useful - any more.
I think it is this fact - perhaps more than any other anti-gay sentiment, per se - that disturbs anti-SSM folks the most.
This comment was written by Lenka.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2004 at 8:03 am
Gay Marriage Debate
This comment was written by Dreams Into Lightning.I’d post on gay marriage more often if I could handle it this well …
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November 28th, 2004 at 8:28 am
If you want to argue that the essence of marriage is to “protect” women, then the Bible is not your friend. The story of Onan makes it quite clear that the essence of marriage is to provide a man a method of bearing him an heir. (That tool is called a wife, aka a womb on feet.) A man married his dead brother’s wives whether he wanted to or not, and definitely if they wanted to or not, because the need to produce a legal heir for the dead brother outweighed all other considerations, demonstrating that it was the most important part of marriage.
The Biblical argument against gay marriage is a solid one, logically. Women were made *for* men as servants, companions, and tools to bear a man’s children. Therefore marriage is male/female because it’s the method of having your rightful access to a servant/womb/companion without degrading her family by calling her a concubine or a slave.
I am beyond annoyed by all the back-bending illogical arguments from people who should just come out in support of patriarchy but don’t want to because they know that it is repellant to the modern view of democracy.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2004 at 11:20 pm
Amp, I am just curious…in your experience, have any of your rational, well-reasoned arguments on this subject ever changed someone’s mind?
I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying the “sides” are so entrenched here, I have yet to see such a thing happen.
This comment was written by Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2004 at 11:58 pm
Jasper-
I don’t think anyone’s mind is ever changed by a single argument (or anyway, it happens incredibly rarely, at best).
I do think that people’s minds are sometimes changed by an accumilation of arguments and discussions over the course of time. If someone finds it harder and harder to defend their positions with conviction, or feel more and more that what they’re saying is untenable, they’ll eventually switch. Not in a sudden, “you’ve convinced me!” sort of way, but in a “well, I’ll talk about other subjects for a few months or years, and then come back to this subject having gradually rethought my position” sort of way.
People usually need a period of separation from the arguments to be able to rethink their position; otherwise pride tends to get in the way.
I’m also aware that most of the people reading arguments on the internet are lurkers, some of whom (perhaps) are fence-sitters. So I try and put on a good argument for the sake of any fence-sitters that may be reading.
That said, I have of late been losing faith in the whole endeavor. Many people don’t make decisions based on trying to think about positions with clarity; they don’t even pretend to. They just go with their guts, and they don’t care if what they’re saying makes sense. Obviously, I’m not going to be persuasive to someone like that, no matter how hard I try.
For me, the bottom line is this: I didn’t choose to have what talents I have. I’m pretty good at logical argumentation, so that’s the way I try to contribute. I figure, since that’s what I can do, that’s what I should do.
(I do other things as well, like volunteer work, for whatever good that does).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2004 at 11:58 pm
http://www.lgsz.com/profile.asp
This comment was written by bodazhang.http://www.tjwatch.com
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November 29th, 2004 at 3:44 am
A very good post. You’re such a kind and generous person, Amp! I’m a bit more cynical, at least this morning. My reaction to
“No one at the Institute for American Values (Elizabeth’s employer) is suggesting that we bring back coverture or outlaw divorce, for example.”
is “yeah, not this year anyway, or at least not on the record”…
This comment was written by David M. Chess.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 3:57 am
One argument against the essentialist view of marriage, it occurs to me, is common usage. People have no problem understanding same-sex marriage; if I say “I have these two friends who are gay guys and they went to San Francisco and they got married”, no one will say “what do you mean?”, and the only people who will suggest that I’m misusing the word “marriage” are a very few people with a theoretical axe to grind. *8) People may say “that shouldn’t be allowed” or “they’ll burn in hell for eternity unless they repent”, but no significant number of people will fail to understand what it means. This suggests that same-sex marriage is easily understandable as marriage, and that the different-sex bit isn’t inherent to the meaning of the word.
Just a thought…
This comment was written by David M. Chess.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 5:33 am
The assumption of that flawed “argument” is also that the purpose of marriage is to rear children. It’s not so, and the law does not require it to be so.
So we do have heterosexual marriages with no children. No one suggests we ban marriage for people who do not want or cannot have children and call that “civil union” instead, right?
On the other hand we have same-sex couples who do rear children who are either biological children of one of the partners, or have been adopted where the law allows it.
So, even if Elizabeth thinks it’s such a bad thing not to be raised by both your own biological parents, it’s not enough to argue against SSM, because SSM couples who raise children already exist, even without being married.
What does she suggest be done about it?
What I find most unpleasant is that idea of biology above all. As if biological parents were automatically good parents. As if raising children was more a matter of stamping your own DNA on them than caring for them. It’s insulting to adoptive parents of any sex as well as to the adopted children - and I thought that kind of mentality was something of the past.
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November 29th, 2004 at 6:05 am
The problem with the ‘essentialist’ argument is that we are not talking about philosophy, but about law. Law changes, and is not fixed to ‘essentialism.’ Otherwise we’d all be scratching our heads in bafflement about the idea that women can vote, own property, have equal rights with their husbands, etc. because ‘essentialist’ arguments about Woman’s Nature would have carried the day.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 6:13 am
Very, very nicely done Amp.
What is so infuriating to me, personally, is that whether you are a fence sitter or an “essentialist” it is doubtful that you would want to put up with laws or policies that required you to conform to biblical norms, and yet, this is what underlies most anti-ssm reasoning. You are willing or even happy to prohibit ssm because you can, because it affects a minority of people, and it will never, you believe, come back to bite you, and therefore, you need not plumb the consquences of the “logical construct” that “marriage” is a union between male and female created to enable and support the continuation of society through child rearing.
I recently read a commentary by Dr. Albert Mohlers of the Southern Baptist Convention (please don’t insult SBs as a group, my sweet husband is an SB who does not oppose ssm)– railing against what he calls the “willful barrenness” of married heterosexual couples. And if Elizabth keeps railing against the evils of “non-bio” parents perhaps we will finally cause an epiphany for the fence sitters: The anti-ssm forces will increasingly, I believe, begin to make arguments, and perhaps try to make policy, based on the biblical “norms” that we as a society have rejected — the exclusivity of patriarchal family arrangements, revulsion at the childless (Remember the paradigmatic biblical hearoine, Rebecca, Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth — all made whole and holy by miraculous childbirth), and obsession with genetic or biological lineage.
If you think society has “moved beyond” those ideals and made them much more nuanced so that you would be outraged if the government tried to deny contraception to married couples who hadn’t fulfilled their childbearing responsibility (in accordance with OT norms that married couples should “be fruitful and multiply”), then please open your mind just a little bit further.
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November 29th, 2004 at 7:00 am
Amp: No one at the Institute for American Values (Elizabeth’s employer) is suggesting that we bring back coverture or outlaw divorce, for example.
monica: No one suggests we ban marriage for people who do not want or cannot have children and call that “civil union” instead, right?
Sadly, I think that this is just the direction that we are headed. I give you this scary article, that was mentioned by Barbara above:
http://www.christianpost.com/dbase/editorial/173/section/1.htm
I think that the anti-SSM arguments are just the tip of the iceberg in what will become a battle at this primordial level of retro-Biblical morality. No-fault divorce, the right of people to choose not to have children (do you see the threat to birth control behind that?), and eventually the human status of women as individuals. It may be that if this agenda becomes obvious, it will be stopped by an outraged backlash, but it’s also possible that they will do a lot of damage under the radar . . .
This comment was written by acm.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 9:37 am
. . . since interracial marriages are among the most likely to divorce. Really?
Amp: IMO she is not saying that there are no problems with marriage. I think she is trying to say that we should not pile more problems onto a institution that values the desires of the individual more than the needs of the children for whom the institution was developed to protect.
We have over the last 25 years experimented with easier divorce laws. The changes in divorce laws benefitted those individuals who wanted to easily end their relationships. However, in the long run it has proven a disaster for children and the meaning of committment, community and marriage.
More lax divorce laws have proliferated “blended faimilies”. The blended family harks back to the days of polygamous relationships, without the “amore” because it is forced and generally contentious. SSM in my opinion would is a far better model than the divorced family couplings. SSM would fair better if it focuses on the benfits the children will reap from the polyamorous families created. I see blended families of SS couples that are far better than the blended families of homosexual couples. There is more love and benefits for the children in a purposeful blended family than one forced from divorce.
For instance, a male couple can provide sperm for a female couple (which is common in male relationships who want a child). The female couple can raise the children while the male couple use their combined resources and “male privilege” to economically benefit the children.
This model is far better than the heterosexual model of one man and one woman , or the blended family that was produced by divorce. We used to raise children as a community; I think SSM will bring back the days where we raised children as a “village” for the benefit of our society and not the individual.
This comment was written by jstevenson.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 10:04 am
Monica: “As if biological parents were automatically good parents”. I don’t think Elizabeth is saying that they’re *automatically* good parents. She’s saying that she has evidence that convinces her that, for whatever reason, children just are (as a matter of statistical fact, and not as a moral or any other sort of judgement) better off when they are raised by the people who are their biological parents.
(I haven’t made any kind of detailed study of that evidence; my gut and probably biased suspicion is that, like so many other bodies of evidence, it may support correlation but not causation, and therefore it may tell us little or nothing about whether or not increasing bioparenting per se would increase child welfare. But for clarity I think it’s important to note the existence of this putative evidence, and realize that Elizabeth and friends are relying on it, and not just on some theoretical pro-bioparenting assumption.)
This comment was written by David M. Chess.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 10:17 am
RE marriage for the children or for the male hier: I think both Mythago and Robert are correct.
Both arguments use marriage, but I think Mythago is more on point regarding the true historical purpose of “marriage”. I think Robert’s argument goes more to the precursors of marriage and lend itself more to the purpose of male:female relationships instead of marriage as a legal institution.
DJW spoke about female- female marriages in the Sudan. I think those relationships are more of a polygamous model of community and the benefits/necessity of raising children in a community of women.
This comment was written by jstevenson.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 10:48 am
On further consideration, I disagree with Robert’s fundamental premise; I think the issue of essentialism v. constructivism is really a red herring.
“So the conflict seems to be between people who have a constructivist view and people who have an essentialist view.”
If this were really true, then it seems to me that there’d be no controversy over fully marriage-equivalent civil unions that didn’t have the word “marriage” applied to them. But of course there is controversy over those, and my impression is that to a very large extent the same people who oppose same-sex marriage also oppose marriage-equivalent (i.e. having all the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage) same-sex civil unions.
If the only issue was whether or not the word “marriage” refers essentially (whatever that might mean) to the different-sex case, then there wouldn’t be an issue with same-sex civil unions with all the rights and privileges of (but not the name of) marriage.
Since there pretty clearly *is* an issue with such civil unions, I think we can conclude that the underlying disagreement here is *not* about whether the definition of the word “marriage” refers essentially to a relationship between people of different sexes.
(Now of course there are some people,and Robert may be one of them, who oppose same-sex marriage (or just think it’s impossible as a matter of word meanings), but would have no problem with full fledged same-sex civil unions. My impression, though, is that such people are a small minority of the anti-ssm population, and that their opinions are not representative of the main stream of anti-ssm opinion.)
This comment was written by David M. Chess.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 11:07 am
If Elizabeth used clarity she might have said that there are studies that show that in the context of divorce, a child (whether adopted or biological) tends to lose the tight bond with a noncustodial “original” parent without developing a comparably tight bond with a step parent, which means that it is less likely that there is a parent - step or bio - who is heavily vested in that child’s welfare. Probabilities are what they are, obviously, individuals vary tremendously. It’s not the biological link that matters, since I would imagine that adopted children are just as valued by their adoptive parents as biological children are by their biological parents. The issue is family break up in a society that, unlike European counterparts, is highly mobile, and thus particularly vulnerable to lessened contact between children and their non-custodial parents. Out of sight out of mind, to put it bluntly. That issue has nothing to do with ssm. It is a trend that has proceeded apace without regard to the legality of ssm.
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November 29th, 2004 at 1:04 pm
I agree with those who say marriage was originally constructed as a way to preserve the male’s genetic ties to his offspring, but hand in hand with that goes the need to control the promiscuity of the mother. In most polygamous societies (which the Bible rose from), wives were typically cloistered from other fertile men. In upper classes those wives (& all other “owned” women be they concubine or slave) were isolated in harems, with castrated keepers. In lower classes (like Afghanistan) women are confined to their tents and can only go outside with a male escort who is related to the woman. Christianity did take a monogamous turn but you still see evidence of cloistering of women, especially in the Middle Ages when the current “institution” of marriage was really set. You had chaperones and chastity belts, and proof of the bride’s virginity was of paramount importance. These are all tools intended to insure that any children the wife bore genetically belonged to her husband.
And if you need any more evidence that this belief is still alive and kicking in today’s society, just turn on Jerry Springer sometime. Each episode is one shocking paternity revelation after another. And the key to the shock value is the promiscuity of the mother.
This is exactly why systematic rape of women is such a persistent & effective war tactic even today (i.e. Africa and Bosnia). It strikes at the very heart of what is most sacred to patriarchal societies: the sexual purity of their women. So much so that married victims will usually refuse to admit the rape because they know their husbands will likely divorce them or worse if it becomes known; and unmarried victims know no man will marry them if they’ve been ’soiled’.
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November 29th, 2004 at 1:48 pm
“That issue has nothing to do with ssm.”: Well, *I* agree with you. *8)
But as Amp’s post says, the argument is that ssm will cause fewer children to grow up with their bioparents, and therefore it’s a bad thing that shouldn’t be allowed. So we who think that that’s a bad argument need to specifically counter that claim.
I don’t think the data that Elizabeth is relying on are all in the context of divorce (although as I said I haven’t studied them in any detail)…
This comment was written by David M. Chess.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 5:20 pm
Hey Amp,
For what it’s worth, I love reading your arguments, even if some people can’t get past their own entrenchments to appreciate them. I especially love them because it usually means the next time I end up talking about a given subject I have another beautiful cohesive position to wrap myself in.
And then I tell my partner, and my friends, and then your one clear and cogent post has become a part of a whole bunch of people’s personal views. And that is, indeed, a great contribution.
leen
This comment was written by leen.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2004 at 6:48 pm
Same Sex Marriage
Time to wade carefully into these waters.
There’s an interesting discussion of SSM going on over at Alas. It’s one of many such threads; Alas is a big proponent of SSM and makes excellent arguments on behalf of his cause. I made a couple of commen…
This comment was written by Let's Try Freedom.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 6:36 am
acm - OMG, that’s really scary. I started reading that article and when I got to “Clearly, children aren’t a part of their interior design plan” I was already with my jaw to the floor, when I got to the scriptural condemnation I had to stop reading… Please tell me there’s only a few nutcases like that.
You know, I honestly cannot *believe* that kind of attitude. Takes the definition of bigoted and reactionary to new levels…
It may be that if this agenda becomes obvious, it will be stopped by an outraged backlash, but it’s also possible that they will do a lot of damage under the radar . . .
Yes, exactly, that’s what I find scariest. For instance, on abortion - I don’t think any country which has already a law granting the right to choose will ever literally go back to banning it, at the very least I think it’d be very hard, and I think even those on the anti-abortion side must know that (at least those who are not completely detached from reality), but in the meantime, it’s being used as tool for attracting votes from the ultra-conservatives and religious right and in turn reinforcing those views in the public debate and so on, with anything that comes attached to them, even the most unpleasant bits. It’s the kind of populism that in some ways reminds me of Le Pen or Haider. Not even they ever seriously thought they could literally ban immigration, of course, but in the meantime they milked (and in turn encouraged) the whole spectrum of attitudes from simply close-minded to paranoid to xenophobic to outright racist… Even if it’s a minority, it always drags down the level of public debate becauyse other political forces have to deal with that, they can’t ignore it or pretend it’s not there. But they can’t deal with that in the rational manner of public discourse, because those views have already placed themselves outside of it. Yet, and here comes the trick, if you do stress that anyone who puts the bible in such a literalist way above modern laws and rights and systems of democracy, then you get accused of not respecting other people’s “points of views” and being anti-religion or a fanatical secularist or some crap like that. (Just like the anti-immigration parties in Europe accuse their critics of being the dictatorial-minded ones). As if it was only points of view, as if our societies had no legal and social principles and frameworks and anybody could suggest anything even if it goes completely against those principles.
I think politicians who exploit this sort of mentality are very cynical, very sly and utterly scrupleless. A combination which I find especially worrying.
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November 30th, 2004 at 6:40 am
oops, should have been “…if you do stress that anyone who puts the bible in such a literalist way above modern laws and rights and systems of democracy is placing themselves outside of rational public discourse, then…”
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 6:40 am
David, here is how I would respond:
1. Out-of-wedlock births and divorce, coupled with a high degree of social mobility, are the overwhelming causes of children not growing up with their “bio” parents.
2. Whether SSM increases the likelihood of children not growing up with bio parents can be characterized as a theoretical risk on a day when you are feeling exuberantly charitable, and as illogical speculation premised on self-serving results oriented reasoning on a day when you are feeling like your normal skeptical self. No matter how you characterize it, it could never be more than a minor contributing factor compared to the forces identified in #1.
3. Denying gay couples the status of marriage results in certain harm, in the sense that gays are actively prohibited from enjoying legal protections that are derived solely from marital status.
4. In a society where the rights of minorities are not taken as disposable commodities, it is wrong to deny them privileges of the majority under almost any circumstance, and it is grossly wrong to deny those privileges when the a priori rationale for doing so is no better than avoiding a highly speculative harm to other people. If heterosexual parents, who are first and foremost responsible for the welfare of their children, take a major risk with their children’s well-being by getting divorced or never marrying in the first place, then the “cure” for their risk taking should be aimed squarely at them. It is not just and makes almost no sense to deny legal status to gay people as a way of providing what would be under the best case scenario a theoretical minor benefit to children for whom THEY have no legal or moral responsibility whatsoever.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 6:55 am
My father gave my brother and I life, and then spent the next 18 years trying to beat it out of us. I fail to see how his biological tie to me was beneficial. Similarly, most of the women I now who have been raped were either raped by their bio-fathers or passed to the friends of their bio-fathers by their bio-fathers. Again, I don’t see how the biological tie is beneficial.
In fact, I would argue (as I have argued about the institution of marriage) that insisting on a casual link between biology and the needs of children increases (and solidifies) the belief of men that they have some intrinsic ownership right over their children. Which, of course, is why marriage as we know it arose. So, I am highly suspicious of any claims to “baby needs both mommy and daddy”. Seems mostly to be a White middle-class ideal anyhow.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 7:48 am
Q Grrl, I can’t vouch for your experience, but there are studies that show that stepfathers are more likely than biological fathers to sexually abuse daughters. I would guess (but don’t know) that the likelihood increases the older the child is when the stepfather is introduced into the family, because he is less likely to feel “parental” towards a maturing girl. I believe that there are both social and economic advantages to being raised by two parents, but that’s not to say that every two-parent family is ideal or reflects those advantages. Single parents have also been known to beat their children. The main point is, none of this is relevant to ssm, except in an “if a, therefore b, probably c, potentially d, and maybe, maybe e, and gays are icky, and this is the way things have been so why even risk e” kind of way.
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November 30th, 2004 at 7:55 am
And I also meant to say that the “bio” connection is not the issue — as in, I have known many adoptive families who are as loving towards and invested in their children as I am. However, the reality is that a male may or may not feel parental towards a maturing girl — he may just feel like she’s any other girl, and one he has particularly good access to. What studies show is that a parent who is a continuous parent to a child beginning at a very young age is less likely to develop that kind of feeling.
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November 30th, 2004 at 8:24 am
I agree with Barbara. If children are so essential, then we should make divorce more difficult. Other ways to strengthen marriage — stiffer fines for adultery (like the military, both parties should be held equally liable). Additionally, there should be civil suits allowed for intentional interference with contract for those people who come in between a wife and her husband.
In many states the disincentive for men with children to get divorced are already pretty harsh so they should remain and the other states should come up to the plate. I especially like Wisconsin’s law. They do not take future children in to account when formulating child support. As one of the CSE case workers told me — if he can’t afford to pay the child support for this child he should not have anymore. I told her that he could pay for the new child with his raise, but you increased his child support payments because of the raise and now he cannot support that child. She said oh well. Too bad I was representing the husband, because I completely agreed with her.
If heterosexual couples see the need to protect the children then we need to get rid of the laws that have created incentives to break your vows, especially after you have children. Too many people have put their happiness over and above the innocent child they brought into the world.
This comment was written by jstevenson.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 8:35 am
I think Elizabeth made a big mistake in raising the bio-parent issue. Yes, having both mother and father raising children is probably the optimal situation in the absence of abuse. But where are the studies showing that children raised by step-parents, single parents, same-sex parents are measurably and predictably far worse off?
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November 30th, 2004 at 8:40 am
“If heterosexual couples see the need to protect the children then we need to get rid of the laws that have created incentives to break your vows, especially after you have children”
….or redefine our concepts of family so that if one person leaves it doesn’t make or break the nurturing that a child receives. Before men decided they needed ultimately to know if a child was theirs or not, children were raised in communal families. Today’s family is not predicated on the welfare of children, but the welfare of the capitalistic state. We have come to interpret the “wellbeing” of children within the framework of capitalism, not the family. The family is ultimately a tool: serving as support for the father and the creation of a larger labor pool. Certainly, within capitalism, if one parent leaves there is a dramatic change in economic welfare which ultimately effects children.
I am frustrated by these arguments about two parent households. Most children spend the majority of their time away from home under the nuturance of private or state institutions (daycare/schools) — I figured that out when I was 9 (that I saw more of my teachers than I did of my parents). But again, this is a social construct and the best way to make uniform and standardized citizens. The claims to needing mommy and daddy to raise baby are really just feel-good middle class dreams. IMO.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 8:43 am
Well, except that Barbara doesn’t really agree that divorce should be made much more difficult. Certainly, however, child support should be of paramount importance. I just don’t think you can legislate morality, and in reality, making divorce more difficult is just as likely to make marriage as divorce less frequent. It just won’t solve the problem. I don’t even really agree with mandatory counseling, though I believe it should be strongly encouraged. As in all things, what I really believe is in a stronger safety net, because economic consequences of divorce are (I believe) just as likely to have negative emotional consequences for children as having your parent move out.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 10:19 am
I don’t think Elizabeth is saying that they’re *automatically* good parents. She’s saying that she has evidence that convinces her that, for whatever reason, children just are (as a matter of statistical fact, and not as a moral or any other sort of judgement) better off when they are raised by the people who are their biological parents.
David, there is no difference between those two statements.
That belief Elizabeth is basing her ‘argument’ on is indeed the belief that biological parents are automatically good, ie. *better* than non-biological parents.
Where is that evidence? what statistics? what facts? It’s just her belief, and it’s very overtly a moral judgement. That’s the entire point of her ‘argument’. Moral concern over the poor children who don’t grow up with both biological parents.
You can’t pretend it’s only a neutral claim, and not a negative judgement of: adoptive parents and children, single parents and their children, separated/divorced parents and their children, and, last but not least, gay parents and their children.
That belief that it’s always better to grow up with biological parents is a pure abstraction, which does not take into account many factors, many different situations, individual differences and cases, the very ideal of what makes good child-rearing - which has nothing to do with biology. Being a responsible enough parent to raise children in a sufficiently healthy manner is not something that magically happens at the moment of conception or birth - that, I think we can all agree is a fact. You don’t become a parent in the fullest sense of the word simply by virtue of conceiving and giving birth. It’s something people do for years, and learn to do along the way. Some people are better than others at it, but it’s only up to what kind of individual character and skills they have. Not to mention a little thing called love and affection. Which again, is not a gift bestowed on children only by virtue of DNA.
Elizabeth’s belief also does not take into account the fact that children do not live in a bubble with their parents, isolated from the rest of the world.
Even in the most “traditional” families, kids will most likely have siblings, relatives, friends, teachers, classmates, possibly activities outside the school, etc. etc.
Yet, it seems to me that, too often in this sort of debate, this is overlooked and there’s this obsession with the nuclear family as if it was a biological unity existing on its own. In a little house on the prairie where the kids don’t see anybody else for days and when they do, it’s a creepy stranger with an axe… you know, the perfect setting for a horror movie. :)
Seriously, what’s with this myth? it conveniently does away with that little thing called society. A lot of the things that do influence how children grow up also extend beyond the sacred trinity of mom and dad and child. Funny how the conservatives remember this when it’s about denouncing the decadence of modern culture, but completely forget it when it’s about essentialist views of the family.
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 1:13 pm
Q Grll — I completely agree with the communal aspect of raising children. My neighbor and I were talking about that the other day. It is ridiculous that everyone stays home with their significant other “watching” the children, wishing they could go out and do something. It would make more sense if parents shared watching children — if you are going to be there you might-as-well watch after the other kids too.
This scenario has been frowned upon by modern society. I am not a proponent of polygamy, but that is the premise of polygamy and polyandry. If it were not for the fact that men inherently will fight, dominate and attempt to collect more than the other guy it would work out well.
This comment was written by jstevenson.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 1:26 pm
“This scenario has been frowned upon by modern society. I am not a proponent of polygamy, but that is the premise of polygamy and polyandry. If it were not for the fact that men inherently will fight, dominate and attempt to collect more than the other guy it would work out well.”
Hmmmm. Well, you posit polygamy and polyandry within Patriarchy, so maybe that’s what would happen. You still put men in the dominant, chest beating role, and I’m not convinced that is what would happen in extended families.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 1:44 pm
However, the reality is that a male may or may not feel parental towards a maturing girl — he may just feel like she’s any other girl, and one he has particularly good access to.
Barbara, that’s supposing the two basic conditions that make it more likely for a man to abuse a child is to have access to her/him, and not be restrained by the incest taboo.
By that standard, no male should ever become a schoolteacher, or a pediatrician, or a social service worker, and anything that puts them at grabbing distance from children not their own.
That’s a terribly reductive view of men, and human behaviour in general, don’t you think?
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 2:02 pm
Men aren’t the only issue in those kinds of relationships, j. Women are jealous, too. We have traditionally stifled it because our choice has been a)live with the other women or b)die in the cold.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 2:25 pm
Q Grll: That statement was tongue in cheek. I also think the extended family format is not male dominant.
At least in my experience the woman or matriarch held all the power. Perhaps that is because I grew up in an “ethnic” household. Any “chest beating” by men was basically the bird’s feathers. The men did nothing in our family without the consent and approval of the leader — Nana. Anything they said was basically bravado. They all went home after the card game and did their wife’s bidding.
Amanda, I think you are correct about the jealousy aspect, but as you say, necessity kept those feelings hidden, but not without justice/revenge.
This comment was written by jstevenson.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
Monica, I don’t have a reductive view of men. Most men are not abusive, including most step parents and boyfriends. I am referring to studies that definitely show an increased risk of sexual abuse by step parents or boyfriends as opposed to “original parents” and I am theorizing why that is. And yes, access plays a big role. I have set up compliance programs for day care centers, which are generally staffed by women, and I can tell you that anyone who has supervisory contact with children, including pediatricians and school teachers, almost always follows specific protocols to avoid accusations of abuse, both founded and unfounded. You have to assume, like it or not, that abuse could occur, even though it is much more likely that it won’t. Operating under different assumptions, for instance, as the Catholic Church has, is a recipe for disaster.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2004 at 10:12 pm
In many states the disincentive for men with children to get divorced are already pretty harsh
You don’t have a choice about divorce. There aren’t many judges who will refuse to grant a no-fault divorce because only one party wants it.
Making divorce more difficult is no solution–then we go back to the days celebrated in vintage detective novels, where people killed off their spouses because “s/he won’t give me a divorce,” or simply abandoned their families, or dragged their kids through knock-down-drag-out fights about who fucked around or who was ‘emotionally abusive.’
People simply need to take their responsibility to childre seriously. You can’t legislate that easily.
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December 1st, 2004 at 2:14 am
Barbara, I think you’ll agree being a priest (or nun) in a Catholic Church is quite different from being an adoptive parent or stepfather or stepmother (females can abuse children too, sexually or otherwise) or partner to someone with children not your own. Or even a school teacher or paediatrician. The abuses by Catholic priests did not occur simply in a condition of access to children, but in environments where sexuality is totally repressed and demonized, control and authority over other people can be exercised in unrestrained and unhealthy ways, due to the priest being a religious figure. As a consequence those religious enviroments where abuses occurred most often probably attracted a higher percentage of people with disturbed behaviour than the average. That, aside from individual factors of course. The incidence of abuses is still a minority of the total, so at the root there’s got to be a personal “trigger” for that behaviour.
Then, even if the risk was unequivicall proven to be consistently higher in the case of non-biological parents, abuse in the family occurs heavily with biological parents anyway (or close relatives). The incest taboo clearly doesn’t stop people who are seriously disturbed in that sense. Maybe having and raising children is in itself a factor in facilitating abuse? Come on.
And how is this an argument against SSM anyway? If that’s the reason you object to SSM, then you’d have to also be against adoption, and against divorce. Do you want to ban those things too?
This comment was written by monica.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2004 at 5:47 am
Regarding stepfamilies, there’s actually a lot of evidence that children - and especially girls - are more likely to be abused in families with stepfathers. See “Children at Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children after Divorce,” in Cornell Law Revew, Vol 86, Jan 2001, Number 2, for a review of some of the literature on this subject.
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December 1st, 2004 at 6:39 am
Monica, I have said many times (see previous posts) that in fact, this has nothing — not a thing — to do with ssm. But Qgrrrl seemed to be making the point that there is zero advantage to being raised by one’s biological parents, which is something that has not been borne out by studies. I don’t have stats and studies filed verbatim in my brain, but in fact, the “child sexual abuse hysteria” (please note the quotes — I don’t think it’s hysteria) began with day care centers and schools, which quickly adopted protocols to avoid abuse and unfounded allegations of abuse. The sentinel step for avoiding abuse is to make sure that an adult is never alone with a young child, that is, to avoid giving adults private “access” to children. The rules vary by the age of the child, so, for instance, a teacher can be alone with a class full of five or six year olds, but in general, all the doors have windows, etc.
The Church (or many parishes) never adopted these safeguards, or if they did, they didn’t enforce them with regard to priests. If you read accounts of adolescent boys, in particular, who were abused, this is clearly the case. The good thing about the safeguards is that when they are in place, it doesn’t matter how sexually repressed father is if he has no access to children. People who violate the rules are fired. The Church won’t fire priests, and unconscionably relocated known predator priests where they were able to continue causing harm. And of course, no current safeguard makes up for past abuse.
An additional problem is that if you “underperform” and don’t adopt these rules, you can attract predators. And on and on. (Note that pediatricians are at low risk for a different reason — there are alot of walls to climb to become a pediatrician, not so many to become a scout leader or a daycare worker. Pediatrics therefore doesn’t attract alot of opportunistic predators.)
But do not think that pediatricians and teachers as well as scout leaders, daycare workers and lots of others haven’t changed the way they do things in response to increased awareness of child sexual abuse. They definitely have.
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