A truly tragic thing happened, and the daughter, who was only 19, was killed by a car just a couple of days ago. All of us are of course in shock, but we could help notice that while all of the family was mentioned in the obit, including her stepfather, her wife-to-be was not.
I know that the mother wouldn’t not have left her out, so someone else must have done that. I just can’t help thinking that if it had been a husband-to-be there was no chance that he wouldn’t have been included.

It’s a minor thing, but it struck me and others really hard.

…Back in the simpler days of 2002, when we were planning our wedding, Jeanne and I used to coo fondly at each other about the joys that lay ahead. It wasn’t that we were unsupportive of our gay friends, no. We were just looking forward to the government’s validation of our relationship’s specialness - a license that affirmed that the two of us had made a unique and personal eternal vow to each other. Something uniquer and specialer than any of our homosexual acquaintances could ever even hope for.

We’re all for the separation of church and state, naturally, but if the government doesn’t define marriage as the sacred union between a man and a woman, who will? Are Jeanne and I expected to treasure our union solely on the basis of our deep love, personal beliefs, public vows, and the government’s blessing? Sorry, Judge Pinkypants, but that’s just not good enough. Not for us. We need to know that we’ve got something that’s only available to 90% of the population, the select and upstanding few…

Warning - not drinks safe. (Nothing on Fanatical Apathy is.) If you can find the audio from the This American Life braodcast, it’s actually even funnier, because Adam is a very good reader - and they mixed it with excellent music choices, after the fashion of the old Warner Bros cartoons.

On a more serious note, I recommend everyone who hasn’t yet, read J.S. Mill on the Polygamy Problem and the whole “consenting adult”/legal rights business - and the problem of trying to write your squicks and mores into law for everybody. It radically reshaped my thinking on this and made me much more receptive to same-sex marriage, when it became an issue - even though as a disgruntled, betrayed Catholic from the Archdiocese of Boston I was alreaed starting to look squiggled -eyed on being told that gayness was the worst threat to morality to come down the pike…

Those with good historical memory will also recall how the very first legal acknowledgments of worker’s rights led to the collapse of the free market in the space of five years. In 1815, to be precise. (What is currently known as free market is only a set of elaborate virtual reality system that works in persuading us we’re still living under capitalism, when in fact, it’s already been destroyed by socialists.)

After gay, polygamous, and man-gerbil marriages, post-post-postmodern microchips will be implanted in conservatives to force them to accept the absence of absolute truths.

Beware, the glorious dictatorship of relativism is only just starting…

muttley laugh

(Don’t tell anyone, but I have it on good authority that it’s the freemasons, not those nasty unfeminine baby-eating feminists, who are behind this machiavellian scheme…)

Oh, and for the record, I’m a feminist who is married to the father of her child, a man who is also a feminist and who, like me, voted against the amendment banning same-sex marriage in our state.

Ditto, with baby #2 on the way. So much for that theory, eh?

Look, I understand that some people who post on this site were women studies majors. I understand that they believe in a bogeyman called the patriarchy that has oppressed women for centuries and most be abolished at all costs.
I also understand that most men & women don’t subscribe to this current and dying intellectual fashion.
That most women abhor the term feminist. That they like men and want children, and want those children to have their fathers to raise them. That they want to be married to the father of their children and want to be able to afford to raise those children themselves.

I don’t want to take our troll’s bait, but as a college instructor, I’ve seen how true it is that “most women abhor the term feminist,” which is a rather ironic sentiment coming from 18-year-old girls who attend a co-ed university and live in co-ed dorms. Of course, this is due to the fact that far from being a myth or delusion, the partriarchy, in response to second wave feminism, was powerful enough to launch a very successful anti-feminist campaign whose effects, known as feminist backlash, are pervasive in our society today. Hence the simplistic notion that a woman who’s aggressive enough to challenge normative gender roles must therefore abhor every single traditionally feminine characteristic. That sort of binary thinking is one of the greatest ideological plagues in our society. Oh, and for the record, I’m a feminist who is married to the father of her child, a man who is also a feminist and who, like me, voted against the amendment banning same-sex marriage in our state.

For many years now, and often inadvertently, secular as well as religious researchers have been amassing facts that, properly understood, bolster the case for the traditional family and against its adversaries and would-be imitators. Some of that evidence, such as the harm to children of the fatherless household, is already widely acknowledged by mainstream writers and readers. Some of it, particularly evidence pertaining to the dark side of homosexuality, remains virtually taboo. When all of it is put together, however, this evidence shows that empirical fact is on the side of the traditional family.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0402/opinion/eberstadt.html

The sophomoric undermining of this compelling evidence with such a tortured human face by simplistic postmodern reductionism is the height of inhumanity.
And me and Mary are not the only ones who think so.

57-43 = Oregon.
59-41 = Michigan.
62-38 = California.
62-38 = Ohio.
66-34 = Utah.
67-33 = Montana.
71-29 = Kansas.
71-29 = Missouri.
73-27 = North Dakota.
75-25 = Arkansas.
75-25 = Kentucky.
76-24 = Georgia.
76-24 = Oklahoma.
78-22 = Louisiana.
86-14 = Mississippi.

Believe it or not these are people defending marriage & the family. If they were all that concerned with the behavior of homosexuals they would have been up in arms against Lawrence and NOT Goodrich.

In (partial) response to Emjaybee -

This is only preliminary response to the unbelievably self centered, overly emotive and warmed over Marxist radical egalitarianism.
Apparently I stand as the oppressor against her oppressed.
The master to her slave, in this dialectic.
As much as I would like to play the bourgeoisie to Emjaybee proletariat : there is to much real pain in this all to real world. Someone has to do the serious work of defending family structures against the radical innovators that have led to nothing except, illegitimacy, divorce, and bareness, and all the poverty, crime, loneliness, physiological and physical pain involved.

Emjaybee writes

I don’t like you because you try to define my marriage based on your morality instead of respecting that the right to define a marriage belongs soley to the people entering into the contract.

Well then.. You and you sympathizers on this blog may agree with this then

“”David Chambers, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, wrote in The Michigan Law Review that those who support plural marriage ought to also support gay marriage. He argued that rather than reinforcing a two-person definition of marriage, gay marriage would make society more accepting of further legal changes: “By ceasing to conceive of marriage as a partnership composed of one person of each sex, the state may become more receptive to units of three or more.” Similarly, Alternatives to Marriage Project activist and University of Utah law professor Martha Ertman noted in The Harvard Law Review that legal and social opposition to polygamy is decreasing and that increasing acceptance of homosexual partnerships is slowly (and, to her mind, rightly) resulting in the final destruction of the traditional marriage ideal.”"

http://students.law.umich.edu/mlr/
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/basham200504180745.asp

A straightforward response to exactly how far you wish to take this little experiment is not an unfair question.
Is this on the inevitable path of our evolution?

(more later)

Who said that divorce is necesary a bad thing to start? I mean, even assuming that divorce rates has increased after divorce laws where made available, why should we consider it as a bad sign? What is worse…to remain in an abusive and unhappy relation as many couples have done for centuries, or have the right to rectify?

Fritz, why do you say we can´t have a discusion on” a.) sexual norms b.) gender norms c.) personal responsibility d.) any norm or responsibility”? Just because we don´t happy to agree with your conception of all those? Just cause we don´t buy the sickenning and hypocrite moralism of conservatives in all those areas?

Those questions to start….

Social conservatives would say, of course, that it does, but McArdle is a libertarian, not a conservative.

If state-sanctioned things like visiting rights in hospitals, inheritance, tax advantages, etc. were not attached to marriage, then gays/lesbians would have less incentive to seek the religious/political joining of two people into a ‘lifetime’ of togetherness.

Or, put another way, without the benefits bestowed by the state in marriage, would hets seek a formal marriage in greater or lessor numbers?

The state does have some interest in providing a stable ground for the raising children, but as long as that stable ground is buttressed with many other state-provided benefits (that don’t clearly relate to the stable family issue), then there is very legimate reasons for ensuring that non-het couples have ‘the equal protection of the laws’.

Society would have been far, far better off if we had started out saying that ‘civil unions’ for all couples were the province of the state, and marriage was a religious supplement to those unions that is optional.

It is probably too late to separate the state’s civil union from the church’s marriage, so the question becomes which institution must bend - the church allowing for ‘equal protection’, or the state reinforcing a discriminatory religious principle. In that equation, I’ll choose the state prevailing for equal protection, but many others would not. That is the heart of the question, IMO.

As for divorce, single parenthood, “illegitimacy”, I’m with Leanne and Kristjan here. All the talk of marriage as “institution” ultimately becomes an abstraction, as if marriage was some platonic idea that existed in a separate sphere, as an entity in itself, and not something made up of individuals and therefore, different in each case. How can we say marriage in the absolute is good, and divorce or single parenthood is bad? Two people can stay married all their lives and have a very unhealthy relationship, is it ok just because the formal institution of marriage is preserved intact? A marriage is only as good as the people in it. If this is “moral relativism”, then it is the good, practical, humane kind of relativism. Absolutising an institution places it so above the individuals in it, it makes it a form of tyranny, a kind of despotic god to worship regardless. Marriage is supposed to serve people, not the other way round.

Now, how, if marriage is such a marvelous thing, are all these women willing to forgo marriage? WHY is there this competition for men where women who want to get married are trumped by women who will “give it away for free without demanding the men carry any responsibility”??

Is it because of the lack of stigmatisation of unwed mothers and premarital sex? (Do we want people getting married only to avoid stigmatisation??) Or is it because married women have the burden in the marriage of taking care, not only of the children, but of the man as well? That married women were subordinated to the desires, and life and career plans of their husbands? That married women often cannot refuse sex, and have many more children than they’d like? (the pill was perhaps more of a boon to married women than to unmarried ones.. my own grandmother had 9 children, the last two of which the doctor warned her, could cost her her life) That married women live shorter lives than unmarried women, whereas married men live longer lives than unmarried men?

I fail to see why a decline in marriage rates, or an increase in divorce rates is worse than young people getting married too early or to quickly(like my parents), in order to have sex, or because of unwanted pregnancy. Or worse than staying in unhappy marriages (like my grandparents). I myself have chosen not to get into a traditional male/female marriage. I would be a single mother by choice outside of wedlock if I hadn’t turned out to be infertile. I also would be more likely (I am bisexual) to marry a woman than a man, since the societal gender role pressure is less stifling.

As someone pointed out, enforced marriage expectations (such as in Africa) do not guarantee lifelong monogamy. Enforced gender roles (such as women being compliant and feminine in Thailand for instance) does not guarantee societal stability… look at the rate of prostitution there for young women. Stigmatisation does not stop illegitimacy (foundling homes were overflowing in Victorian Europe).

And denying lesbians and gays the right to marry only makes them less likely to be stable in their relationships vs not having relationships at all. The nice lesbian couple next door will undermine the nice married het couple’s views of gender roles in relationships just as much if they are living together “in sin” as if they are joined in wedlock.

Anyways, brilliant discussion over here. And I think I am in love with basement variety Kim. That was a wonderfully restorative retort to Fritz.

So to me, it seemed she was actually making (perhaps subconsciously) an argument that changes that effect institutions poorly are still worth doing if it is the “moral” thing to do. If my interpretation of her argument is correct, then in the end we are just back to “is granting homosexuals equal marriage rights the morally correct thing to do?” I say yes due to equality issues, others say no due to their biblical interpretation issues. Square 1.

Since Pope Ratzinger’s election, I’ve visited a good many blogs (slightly to the right of Ampersand, but well to the left of the MSM) discussing religious and sex / gender issues, and Fitz has appeared on many threads.

He was afflicting a thread at Kevin Drum’s blog with theology.

He is a somewhat smarter version of Bevets, the troll at Fark and Metafilter who spams comments in much the same way.

A “Summon Bevets” and “Dispel Bevets” cards, as in the old paper version of D&D, were quickly photoshpped.

Ignore Fitz. He no doubt thinks you’re all going to hell anyway.

I realize that this advice seems rude, and not respectful of personalities and different political views, but you cannot have a discussion with someone whose role is to hijack, spam links, make other people angry, and then leave without taking any responsibility (the “responsibility” he trumpets) for the melted-down thread.

Ignore him.

Except that you can’t have a subordinated wife if there’s no clear way to say who the ‘wife’ is.

If your neighbors, that nice lesbian couple next door, don’t seem to have explicit roles about who does what in their family, it’s kind of in your face all the time that you don’t have to either. So, in fact, ssm does pose a challenge to other people’s marriages, or at least to the gendered nature of the roles within most marriages. It’s a daily obvious challenge that makes many straight people uncomfortable.

This is of course not a reason to deny gay couples the right to marry. I think it is, however, important to understand that either consciously or unconsciously, this is what’s going on for most (if not all) straight folks opposing same-sex marriage. Understanding that discomfort, confronting it directly and talking about it openly might just enhance our ability to sway those folks.

Simplistic and naïve understandings of foundational social institutions abound on the left.

Slavery used to be among the “foundational social institutions”, yet society didn’t come crumbling down when the practice of it was stopped. Nor would the society have been worth saving, if it had come crumbling down.

A sophomoric scientific rationalism inspires calls of “prove it”? along with a callous dismissal of the data on fatherlessness, illegitimacy, divorce and so fourth.

You know what? I don’t really care about the data on fatherlessness, illegitimacy, divorce and so forth, except in the sense that much of that data carries its own sad story. The fact that some people’s sense of morality (for lack of a better word) seems to condem people who has experienced such a sad story is not really relevant. Nor has neither the sad stories nor the codemnation anything to do with same sex marriage.
There is absolutely no meaningful way that one can argue that same-sex marriage leads to any of these things, and even if it could, this doesn’t mean that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed. There is nothing in that line of argument that shows this.

Oh, and one comment about illegitimacy - what the hell is the problem with that? It just means that the parents are not married. Unless there is some kind of social stigma, caused by people with an out-dated concept of morality, there shouldn’t be any problems with that. Of course, there are obviously times where there are other issues, but illegitimacy per se is not a problem.
I am in a similar camp with Kim, except I don’t feel dislike, but rather disgust.