Jeniffer Roback Morse email newsletter | Jennifer Roback Morse | September 24, 2007
Last week I was able to deliver the following statement before the San Diego City Council. The Council was considering whether to add the City of San Diego’s name to a Friend of the Court brief supporting a case in favor of same sex marriage, currently pending before the California Supreme Court.
Next week, I will be going to Canada to do a briefing for their Members of Parliament about why cohabitation is not the same as marriage. I mention that to indicate that my primary job is to straighten out the straight people. And believe me, it is a full-time job. I am here today to explain why I believe instituting same sex marriage will make that job immeasurably more difficult. The needs of same sex couples and opposite sex couples would both be better served by having distinct institutional arrangements, rather than by trying to have one institution serve the needs of both groups.
Opposite sex couples have children, without any specific intervention by the state. Same sex couples can not have children without specific legal institutions in place to do two things: first, the rights of at least one of the genetic parents must be terminated. Second, at least one member of the same sex couple must have parental rights specifically assigned to them.
The advocates of same sex marriage hope that “marriage” will allow them to skip these steps. They hope, for instance, that any child born to either member of a lesbian couple will be presumed to be the child of both. But that requires that somehow, the male contributor to the conception of the child must be safely out of the way. That step still has to be taken, no matter what kind of union the members of the lesbian couple have with each other. Renaming their relationship should not be enough to invalidate the father’s rights to his child.
In practice, there are two possible things that can happen with the opposite sex parent. Either that parent will be considered legally superfluous. Or, the child can have three parents, the two same sex parents, plus the cooperating opposite sex parent.
Neither of these options are particularly good for children. We know that children thrive when they are raised by two married parents. We know that children suffer specific kinds of losses from the absence of their mother or from the absence of their father. And we know that children in step-families have a specific set of emotional and behavioral risks. We can only imagine how those problems would be compounded in the event of three, rather than two, legal parents juggling the children from one home to another, disputing about custody schedules and fighting over child support.
These are some of the negative outcomes we can expect from trying to make marriage into a gender-neutral institution that applies identically to same sex and opposite sex couples.
1. Triple parenting will emerge, as it has already done in both Canada and Pennsylvania.
2. The state will have to determine, not just record, parentage of same sex couples. If same sex marriage is really treated as the equivalent of opposite sex marriage, that authority will be extended to cover opposite sex couples as well.
3. There will no longer be “natural parents,” only “legal parents.” In Spain, the birth certificates were changed from “mother” and “father” to “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B.” In Canada, the birth certificates were changed from “natural mother” and “natural father” to “legal parent A” and “legal parent B.”
4. Same sex marriage will further the process of marginalizing men from the family. If children don’t really need one parent of each gender, the natural conclusion will be that fathers, not mothers, are disposable.
Legally recognizing same sex marriage will destabilize the legal determination of parentage. In cases in both Canada, which has legal same sex marriage, and Pennsylvania, which does not, courts have recognized three adults as legal parents. In the Pennsylvania case, Jacob v. Schulz-Jacob, the two members of the estranged lesbian couple as well as the biological father, all dispute one another’s rights and responsibilities. The children have all the trauma of divorce, multiplied. They have visitation with three adults, none of whom live together, none of whom are cooperating with each other. It is a psychologist’s nightmare.
We have all seen children of divorced parents shuttling from one household to another. If same sex marriage comes to California, we will be seeing children going among three or even more parents. I urge you to vote against this resolution. Picture a little girl, going from her mom’s house to her mom’s former partner’s house, to her dad’s, to her dad’s former partner’s. Those little children, with their backpacks and their sleeping bags, will be on your head, if the resolution supporting same sex marriage passes.
I speak on behalf of the many supporters of traditional marriage who are arrayed in this room. We come from all the major faith traditions, and no religion at all. But we are united in two core beliefs.
1. We believe that men and women are different in socially significant ways. We believe that mothers and fathers are not perfectly interchangeable. The advocates of same sex marriage must insist that gender is irrelevant to parenting.
2. We believe that something is owed to the child. We believe that every child is entitled to be born into a family of the mother and father who brought them into being through an act of love. Every child is entitled to a relationship with both parents.
Like many others here today, I am devoted to helping opposite sex couples see the importance of life-long married love. Our efforts would be greatly hampered by a judgement of the state saying adults are entitled to cut off a child’s relationship with one of his parents at birth, and that the child should be indifferent as to whether he has both parents or not.
That is why we have come here today: to speak on behalf of those children yet to be born, to affirm our commitment to the principle that every child deserves a mother and a father.
#43–
Michael, your post is honest. I read it, and I get the impression that you are sincere, and telling the truth about what you believe.
However, I also get the impression that you’re responding to post 42, which was by Jim Holman, not me.
I’ve told you. Data is data, but we don’t launch dubious social experiments to prove the data one way or another.
What you are really trying to do is drain moral (by which I also mean the moral and cultural tradition) considerations from your gay marriage agenda. But morality, particularly the lessons (and obligations) of the tradition should not be dismissed as cavalierly as you suggest. Like the ancient African proverb says: don’t remove a wall before you know why it was built.
No substantive data exists that children are harmed by pornography either. Do you suggest we expose children to porn to collect the data about whether or not it is harmful? By your logic, nothing should stop us from this experimentation either.
#41-
Tom,
At the risk of sounding logical and Spock-like, Tom, that’s a fallacy. We don’t have to choose between being deep, and instinctive, or being logical and cold. We can do both. But let’s be aware of what we’re saying.
The reasons that we oppose social policies matter. If those reasons can be articulated, then one can also articulate a response.
The fact that I am focusing on one category of reasoning does not mean that if you agree with me about that reasoning, you therefore support same-sex marriage. It’s entirely possible to oppose it, albeit for different reasons.
Despite what you write about the depth of human beings and our illogical nature, Jennifer Roback Morse wrote an essay that appealed to logic, not just to depth or instinct.
I responded, in kind, to the logic of her essay. In debate, we must strip away the things that are irrelevant so that we can understand the arguments of the people who argue in opposition to us.
This is not a logical trick, it’s human nature, and it’s useful. If you hope to convince a person of something, or if you are trying to decide between different courses of action, you waste time focusing on red herrings and irrelevant arguments.
You write that it is good for infertile couples to marry because it reinforces good social behavior. So be it. In that case, the relevant factor is not the fertility, or lack of it, it is the makeup of the couple.
Pretending that infertility, then, is a valid reason to deny couples the right to marry, is a red herring. It isn’t the reason. You believe that gay couples should not have the right to marry because they are not composed of a man and a woman. That is the relevant factor.
Here’s a hypothetical anecdote to explain why it’s important, in social and civic matters, to determine the real reasons for and against something, instead of false or fallacious reasoning:
Let’s say a city is deciding whether to build a road through a state park. A debate is held, and the residents of town who oppose the road argue that it’s too expensive, and the city must spend its money on other things. The next day, a wealthy donor gives the city all of the necessary money to build the road. A vote is held, and the citizens are still split 50-50. They have a new debate, and now the opponents claim that the road is bad for the environment.
All along, the money issue was a red herring, because it was an easy issue to win. The real reason was the environmental impact, which, for whatever reason, the road opponents were reticent to articulate.
I think a lot of American social debate focuses on irrelevant arguments, and irrelevant evidence, and I think that you’ve illustrated one reason why that is: we’re a nation hotly divided over polarizing issues, and our current cultural climate encourages us to oppose the “other side” at all costs, at all times.
The truth is, humans are capable of rational, logical thought, and if we toned down the venom in our cultural debates, we could politely say to our opponents, “You know, I agree with you about A, B, C, and D, but I still oppose the plan you are suggesting because of E. What are your thoughts on E?”
So, let me rephrase the question I put to you. From Morse’s essay and from your post, this is the logic I see: You believe that the only infertile couples who ought to be denied marriage are same-sex couples. Thus, they ought to be denied marriage not because they are infertile, but because they consist of two members of the same sex. Would you agree?
#52–
Jacobse, you didn’t answer the question.
I’m not asking you to support same-sex marriage. I’m also not suggesting that you must support studying same-sex marriage or parenting.
It’s your reasoning that I’m asking about. I understand completely if you say, “I answered the question in the previous thread truthfully, even though I absolutely, unequivocally oppose same-sex parenting and I do not believe that it is ethical to ever compile the hypothetical data that the question referred to.”
Seriously, you can pile on all the disclaimers and caveats that you want, but please, answer the question. If you did answer the question in the above-posted thread truthfully, then either you have changed your mind, or you presented in this thread an argument that you believe is irrelevant. Which is it?
Well, why don’t you restate your question since I seem to be missing it.
Note 53. Phil writes:
Distinctions, Phil, distinctions. Infertility, and being biologically closed to the creation of new life are two different things. You seem to want to conflate heterosexual infertility (a biological anomaly) with homosexual inability to beget children (a biological impossibility).
Now it’s true that an infertile heterosexual couple cannot create children just as a homosexual couple cannot. But the homosexual problem is not infertility, but biological mispairing.
It’s the plumbing Phil. It just doesn’t work.
Phil & Jim Re: #42, #44, #51 et. al. Phil you are correct in that main impetus for my post #44 was Jim’s #42. Lost track. However, Phil, what I said is not irrelevant to your disagreement with Fr. Hans.
Briefly: Just because there are times when, out of mercy, deviation from spiritual principal is allowed, the spiritual prinicpal is not abrogated.
Tom C writes: “Policies about same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption should not be based on “studies” about whether children in such situations are normal or not. These are questions which are barely amenable to definitions let alone scientific conclusions. What exactly does “normal” mean in a scientific sense?”
The argument isn’t “normal,” but “no difference.” Issues studied include school performance, behavior, parental involvement, psychological problems or the lack thereof, sexual orientation later in life, and so on.
Tom C: “These policies should be based on the opinions of ordinary people regarding what is or is not normal and what is or is not wise.”
Ok, but you’re changing the topic. Fr. Hans said that there was no data. I pointed out there are a large number of studies all of which point to the same conclusion.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing that these studies should be ignored. I mean really, if the studies showed that children in same-sex households did much worse than those in heterosexual households, you’d be all over that, right? Surely your co-religionists would be, and we’d never hear the end of it.
Why should we take the opinions of ordinary people as sacrosanct? Most people don’t even know any children who have been reared in same-sex households. On what would they base their opinions?
Tom C: “I find it amazing that Dean thinks playwrites know more about economics than economists, and that you think same-sex marriage is effectively addressed by “science”. In the meantime, were I to present you with simple mathematics regarding carbon dioxide generation you would respond with highly emotional moral proclamations.”
First, I’m talking about same-sex parenting, not same-sex marriage. The studies to which I referred all are about the former, not the latter. Second, I’m not a fanatic over global warming. I simply think that AGW is an actual phenomenon and that we should look at reasonable options for minimizing it. That opinion is based on the research that currently exists, and on the statements of a number of major scientific organizations. If the weight of scientific opinion shifts in a different direction, great, my opinion will change. I don’t recall being “highly emotional” over the topic, either now, or when my wife bought a Chevy Trailblazer.
Tom C: “The difference between your worldview and mine is not that your’s is scientific and mine is not. It’s that your’s does not circumscribe science to its proper role and mine does.”
I fail to understand how research on same-sex parenting by people who have studied same-sex parenting is irrelevant to the topic of same-sex parenting, whereas the opinions of ordinary people, most of whom know little or nothing about same-sex parenting are relevant to the topic of same-sex parenting. I can’t think of any other field in which we would apply that kind of reasoning.
Fr. Hans: “I’ve told you. Data is data, but we don’t launch dubious social experiments to prove the data one way or another.”
It works the other way; we collect data on situations that exist, not on situations that don’t exist. Same-sex parenting has been going on for a long time.
Fr. Hans: “What you are really trying to do is drain moral (by which I also mean the moral and cultural tradition) considerations from your gay marriage agenda. But morality, particularly the lessons (and obligations) of the tradition should not be dismissed as cavalierly as you suggest. Like the ancient African proverb says: don’t remove a wall before you know why it was built.”
Like it or not, the wall has already been removed, and the studies have not shown any particular damage.
Fr. Hans: “No substantive data exists that children are harmed by pornography either.”
This is not a topic I’ve spent much time studying, but a five-minute internet search revealed a number of such studies.
It’s always been interesting to me that Leviticus contains detailed regulations on everything from animal sacrifice, the buying and selling of slaves and ritual purity to dietary laws yet remains completely silent on female homosexual conduct. It’s not as if distinctions of gender were absent from Leviticus: rather, there were quite a few.
Yet, despite all these highly specific instructions on every manner of conduct, there were no proscriptions against female homosexual conduct. I have my own theory, but I’d be interested to see why others think this was the case.
Note 58. Jim writes:
No there’s not, certainly not enough to justify social experimentation. Making the case that the “data” supports homosexual parenting would take at least a generation, perhaps more, to justify with any certainty in any sociologically conclusive sense. I’m not so sure responsible sociology is the aim here though.
Exactly, which is how we determine the claim that single motherhood has no effect on childhood development (especially boys) is bogus. Yet that was the claim when the nuclear family was being conceptually deconstructed during the height of feminist cultural dominance.
Now you argue that data exists to indicate homosexual parenting is no different than heterosexual parenting, or more bluntly, it really doesn’t matter if Heather has two mommies — or daddies.
Really? Are we ready to launch another experiement to find out if two homosexuals can raise kids thousands of time over?
And does your sociological method allow such predictive certainty? (Hint: it doesn’t.)
Has it? Gay marriage is getting huge resistance across the board. Homosexual coupling is not really marriage, and everyone knows it even though some pretend outrage at the fact. As for gays and children, I doubt most people are comfortable with idea although probably more tolerant of two women raising children than two men. No one is going to stop a lesbian from self-impregnating, but I don’t see a groundswell of support for two men playing mom and dad happening anytime soon.
And data? Be careful when using data predictively (you should know this, it’s an elementary caution) especially in service to a cause. Human affairs are complex, deep, and unpredictable. I’d take the African proverb with more seriousness.
#58 Jim Holman
You wrote
Um, I think this is pretty much the same thing. Only now it depends on how you define “no difference” instead of “normal”.
Look, you can’t think about a thing like this in a scientific way. It would make more sense to think about it in a Jungian sort of way. People are affected tremendously by the images and experiences of early years. Personalities are formed with both feminine and masculine components. The vast majority of people will have a desire to establish a meaningful and sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex. It simply can’t be true that not having that sort of relationship modeled at an early age would have no impact.
In what other area of life do we take someone who has a defective social trait and, instead of merely tolerating it, try to make it normative and then force everyone to celebrate it?
Have you raised both a boy and girl? If so, and you still claim that it would make no difference whether your spouse was a man or woman, I am unimpressed with your powers of observation.
#58 Jim Holman
I seem to remember you getting exercised over women who drive their SUVs to the grocery store. Maybe you were forced to change your attitude, eh? 😉
Tom C writes: “Um, I think this is pretty much the same thing. Only now it depends on how you define “no difference” instead of “normal”.”
The distinction involves a couple of aspects. First, the concept of “normal” would be difficult to define in a research setting, since there are potentially many different traits and no research study could possibly address all of them. Also, as a matter of fact, not all children reared in same-sex households are in fact “normal” — in other words, some are depressed, some don’t do well in school, some have behavior problems, and so on. But the same is true in heterosexual households. So the claim isn’t that children in same-sex households are normal, but that there’s no significant difference between the two populations of children. It may seem like a technicality, but for me to claim that children in same-sex households are “normal” would be to make an assertion that would misrepresent the actual research findings.
Tom C: “The vast majority of people will have a desire to establish a meaningful and sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex. It simply can’t be true that not having that sort of relationship modeled at an early age would have no impact.”
Well, one would naturally suspect that children reared in same-sex households would be more likely to have homosexual orientations. But researchers have looked at that, and that’s not what happens. The implication is that the development of sexual orientation doesn’t have much to do with modeling yourself on your parents.
Tom C: “In what other area of life do we take someone who has a defective social trait and, instead of merely tolerating it, try to make it normative and then force everyone to celebrate it?”
But I think it’s not a defect that matters very much. Let’s look at one measure of how much of a defect homosexuality is — the job market. Having a successful career with a good income depends on a large number of factors — intelligence, hard work, ability to establish relationships with a large number of diverse people, willingness to learn, flexibility, responsibility, and so on.
The financial success of many homosexuals is well-known, even to the point that it is often used as an argument against laws protecting them. The argument is that since they are doing so well, they don’t need any additional protections. Be that as it may, the point is that they are doing well.
In fact, on the “Concerned Women of America” web site there’s even an article about that:
“A new report on homosexual spending power has been released showing the average combined income of homosexual couples to be 60 percent higher than the average U.S. income. . . According to the survey, more than one-fifth of respondents reported a total combined income of $100,000 or more. Nearly 60 percent of homosexual male couples and nearly half of lesbian couples reported a combined income of $60,000 or over.”
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/258/CFI/cfreport/index.htm
The mission statement of Concerned Women of America says that “The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens – first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society – thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation.” So this is a group that is naturally going to be opposed to homosexuality. But even they recognize the financial success of homosexuals.
I can’t comment on the validity of the survey, but incomes and financial success of homosexuals have not gone unnoticed by the business world.
Given the success of homosexuals in the job market, and the difficulty of attaining that success, I think it’s fair to ask how much of a defect homosexuality is. Homosexuals are doctors, engineers, lawyers, soldiers, teachers, truck drivers. Some are Christians. Some are Republicans. They always make up a small but consistent percentage of the population (except in Iran, we are supposed to believe). Isn’t there a point at which we simply conclude that, in a statistical sense, homosexuality is normative — in the same way that dwarfism and left-handedness are normative?
Tom C: “I seem to remember you getting exercised over women who drive their SUVs to the grocery store. Maybe you were forced to change your attitude, eh? ;-)”
Let’s just say it’s not the vehicle I would have bought. But she’s a hobbyist mechanic, and loves muscle cars. She has a 67 Camaro that she rebuilt from the ground up that she used to race at the local drag strip. So for her, if a car has a dial-in time of more than 12 seconds in the quarter, it’s not really a car. Before she went to college, she sold auto parts. Me? I know nothing about cars except for the price of gasoline. Opposites attract, they say.
Why do you keep saying that homosexuality is a genetic trait? It just isn’t true. Even if you have a preponderance to be attacked by this certain sin, does not mean that you have no free will.
As for economic success…
I’d rather be poor with Christ than rich with Satan…
I’d be happy to:
Either
a) you’ve changed your mind,
b) you were lying in the previous thread,
or
c) a couple being “naturally closed to the creation of new life” is irrelevant in determining whether that couple should be allowed to parent.
Which is it?
After you’ve selected an answer, feel free to explain it, of course, but thus, presented with the only three logical possibilities, you have refused to answer the question altogether.
“Thus” should read “thus far.”
That may be true with individuals, Jacobse, but if we’re talking about a couple being infertile, then we’re talking about a couple in “the state of being unable to produce offspring,” or, if you prefer, “The persistent inability to conceive a child.” The latter definition comes from the American Heritage Dictionary.
(The dictionary doesn’t provide a definition of “closed to life,” perhaps because it’s a religious term, not a medical term.)
You’re not discussing infertility, you’re discussing causes of infertility. Or, if you wish, “reasons” that a couple is infertile. If a couple consists of two persons of the same sex, they are unable to conceive a child because they lack the complementary, functioning sex organs necessary for conception.
If a woman has a hysterectomy, then she and her husband are unable to conceive a child because they lack the complementary, functioning sex organs necessary for conceptions.
If you want, you can continue making a distinction between infertility and “closed to life,” but in that case, why don’t we come up with a term that applies to _all_ couples who cannot, under any circumstances, bear children.
I’d be happy to call them “unable to bear children,” if that’s acceptable to you.
In the end, all couples who are unable to conceive children conceive exactly the same number of children. There is no difference in the children that they don’t have, regardless of the many meaningful differences between the couples.
Michael, you write:
Would you say that, in your opinion, homosexual behavior is a nasty sin no matter what “data” is presented about it? That is, even if a thousand “materialist” researchers concluded that homosexual couples are not harmful to themselves, their children or society–
No matter what, you would still view it as a nasty sin, that should not be granted equal status in society?
PHil wrote:
It’s an invalid argument Phil because they are not equivalent examples. A homosexual couple never had, or will have, the biological capability to conceive.
Note 67. Phil, you are trying, almost desperately, to eliminate the biological distinctions between male and female.
The prefix “in” modifies “fertilty”. Fertility presumes the biological possibility of fertility. Same sex couples are not biological capable of conceiving children (short of a turkey baster and the like among two or more females, nothing between two or more males). No amount of language manipulation changes this fact.
No, there is no term for it because it’s elementary biological reality. There is no term describing a male’s inability to give birth to a child either, again because of self-evident biological reality. Have you ever heard anyone say: “That man is infertile because he cannot conceive and carry a child,” or “That woman is infertile because she is unable to produce sperm”? No, of course not.
Doesn’t go far enough. Note how you found it necessary to describe the reason for the heterosexual couple’s infertility, but stop short of describing the reasons a homosexual couple cannot conceive children. It’s not infertility, it’s the plumbing.
Distinctions, Phil, distinctions. Your reasoning is dull on this issue.
Note 65. Maybe I am missing something but I am still unclear about your point. It’s not that I refuse to answer. I don’t understand what you are trying to ask.
Note 63. Jim writes:
In a certain sense yes, in others no. No one is telling , say, Phil that he can’t live with his boyfriend. But marriage and the like? No. Since you are talking in a “statistical” sense, presumably the meaning of the term “normative” applies to the 2% of the population that is homosexual, and is not applied to the cultural demands of the homosexual lobby.
Jacobse,
Re: Note 65–
I’m asking you to choose A, B, or C. Logically, one must be correct; which is it?
I’m aware of the difference between the couples. And I’m not trying to “eliminate” biological distinctions, but you’re pointing out a truism (same-sex couples were never able to have kids) and extrapolating from that a distinction with no validity as it bears to the specific argument of being able to bear children.
For example, if I am a company hiring sperm donors (for whatever reason; it’s hypothetical), I will not hire women, because they can’t produce sperm. But I also will not hire men who lack testicles, because even though most men can produce sperm, those particular men cannot.
It does mean that they are women. It just means, for the purposes of producing sperm, that they have the same inability as women.
Similarly, if I’m hiring a wet-nurse (and what a job advertisement that would be); I won’t be considering any men. But I also won’t be considering any women who have had double mastectomies.
This does not make those women men. Don’t confuse the issue. If you can be compared to the other gender in one distinction, it doesn’t obliterate all distinctions. However, the ability of a woman who cannot give milk is the same as the ability of a man: none. It’s math, Jacobse. None equals none.
If I have a job that requires ability to produce sperm, or milk, or some other gender-linked ability, and I hire people who can’t do it; what difference does it make whether those people are women or men? The difference lies in the people themselves, as you point out, not in their inability. All inabilities are equal. (“Disabilities” might vary in degree, but inabilities are equal.)
The reason you are forced to draw an arbitrary distinction is the same reason you refuse to admit that Morse makes arguments that apply to all infertile couples. It’s the reason you refuse to even consider a some other, common-ground term that would describe the inability of any couple to bear a child.
It’s because the ability to conceive a child is, for the most part, irrelevant to your position. I suspect it’s not really relevant to Jennifer Roback Morse, either, even though she states that children are entitled to a mother and father “who brought them into being through an act of love.”
As I’m sure you can agree, if a couple–any couple–is not capable of brining a child into being, that couple is not capable of bringing a child into being. That argument applies to any two people who can’t bear a child.
This whole debate is not about child bearing. It’s about child-raising. Morse and others focus on child-bearing because it makes their arguments seem logical, although those arguments collapse under scrutiny.
I think perhaps our cultural debate would be more fruitful if partisans stopped throwing red herrings into the mix, and focused solely on their actual issues.
May I ask, Jacobse, since you seem so pleasant when you’re taking the above-quoted stance on gay sex, whether you think the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court was correctly decided?
You’ve said many times that “no one is saying” homosexual sex should be illegal, but–that just means you’re not saying it. You’re also not saying that it should be legal.
Forgive me if I don’t view it as a given that religious conservatives don’t want to criminalize gay sex, but the relevant court case was only 4 years ago, and it was only a 6-3 decision.
So, are you willing to state unequivocally that you do, in fact, believe that homosexual sex should be legal throughout the land?
(I’m not asking you to endorse or condone it; obviously there’s a difference between what you believe ought to be “legal” and what you believe is “moral.”)
No. This is way too simplistic. I don’t believe that there is a heterosexual gene, a homosexual gene, and a bi-sexual gene. Do you believe that there is a bi-sexual gene? Does every possible behavior under the sun arise because there is a gene that demands it? Is there a pedophilia gene? How about a lothario gene?
I would be willing to bet that a huge percentage of males could honestly say something like this:
From the time I was 14 or 15 I began to have urges to have sex with every nubile woman I saw. I never had these urges confined to just one woman, it was always whatever beautiful one crossed my path. My church, my parents, society, all told me that this was not healthy, so I didn’t act on it for years. Then one day I thought it was time to quit living a lie and truly act out what I desired, since it was who I really was.
So should we drop societal norms because obviously it is natural for all these guys to think thus. Why should we frustrate their deepest desires?
Why does homosexuality seem to arise more often in highly sophisticated, urban societies than in tribal or agrarian societies? What of the huge population of people who have for one reason or another practiced homosexuality but then quit it and entered into a successful marriage?
I’m sorry, but the left-handed, dwarf thing is not compelling.
Note 73. Phil asks:
No, I do not but not for the reasons you might think. I think the court overreached. Sodomy statutes are a state matter. The Constitution is silent on homosexual sex.
Not necessarily. If some town or another wanted to outlaw sodomy, that’s their business. It doesn’t matter to me. I am not on a crusade to sanction sodomy.
Note 72. Phil, you pile on even more words to distort the meaning of the word “infertile.” Let’s try it again.
The prefix “in” negates a postive value, in this case the term “fertile.” “Fertile” draws its postive value from physiological reality, namely, a healthy (fertile) man and women, when conjoined, can produce a child.
Two women or two men, however, when conjoined, cannot produce children not because of infertility, that is, the breakdown of a natural biological function, but because their manner of conjoining is physiologically unnatural. In more graphic terms, the anal canal is not a vagina. Male intestines don’t house ovaries. Why you have trouble understanding this is anyone’s guess.
Dean writes: “Why do you keep saying that homosexuality is a genetic trait? It just isn’t true. Even if you have a preponderance to be attacked by this certain sin, does not mean that you have no free will.”
I don’t know if it’s true or not. It hasn’t been demonstrated conclusively either way. It does seem to be a trait that generally appears fairly early, even before puberty.
Concerning free will, yes, homosexuals have free will. And I think that the percentage of homosexuals who could live entire lives of absolute celibacy is probably about the same as the percentage of heterosexuals who could do that. What percentage do you think that might be?
I’m always impressed by the fact that the Apostle Paul recommends that Christians not marry. How many Christians willingly take him up on that offer? A percentage too small to measure, I believe.
Dean: ” As for economic success…I’d rather be poor with Christ than rich with Satan…”
Well sure, but it’s not like homosexuals are making a living by selling crack and doing contract killings. My point was that in the larger society many of them do very well in legitimate business. The issue is not money per se, but the skills and traits required for having a successful career. I know how hard that is, because I’ve never been very good at it.
Fr. Hans writes: “Since you are talking in a “statistical” sense, presumably the meaning of the term “normative” applies to the 2% of the population that is homosexual, and is not applied to the cultural demands of the homosexual lobby.”
Yes, that’s what I mean. I suppose we can call homosexuality a defect. But then everyone has defects. A defect is not the same as a disability. If homosexuality is a defect, then we have to ask what kind of defect it is that gives them such success in the job market. I don’t want to make the market the be-all and end-all, but surely success in the job market indicates an ability to function at a high level of competence and responsibility. And perhaps some of that competence and responsibility translates into quality care of adoptive and foster care of children. The available research suggests that it does.
Note 75–
Ah.
So, what you’re saying is, “no one here is saying that homosexual activity should be criminalized,” but that you wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with it if it was, or at least, if a state or city decided that it should be?
I’m not an Orthodox Christian, and I’m not an Iranian citizen, and yet I have no problem saying that it is wrong for a country like Iran to criminalize Christianity, or converting to Orthodox Christianity. Whether the country’s constitution permits such laws or not, I am happy to loudly proclaim that it ought not happen.
You know darn well I understand it, so the sarcasm sounds a little odd coming from you.
Let’s assume that you’re correct and it’s very important, indeed, necessary, to have a separate phrase that describes either the inability of same-sex couples who can’t have children and heterosexual couples who can’t have children.
Okay, so those are two separate classes of couples, who have completely different reasons for being unable to conceive children.
What is the blanket term you would use to describe both classes of couples?
No, you don’t understand it, or, if you do, your attempt to apply the term “infertility” to both homosexual and heterosexual couples is a cynical manipulation of language to erase the physiological distinctions between male and female.
Jeez. How many different ways are there to say what is so self-evidently true? There is no “blanket” term. Physiology does not conform to language. Language conforms to physiology.
Look, an anal canal is not a vagina. Male intestines don’t house ovaries. This does not render the male “infertile”. It renders him unable to bear children by design. Call it being a man. This is a brute fact of nature, universally understood and recognized by all cultures throughout all history.
Why is this so difficult to grasp?
Look, every conceivable sexual relationship apart from heterosexual conjoining does not produce children. Sex with animals, inanimate objects, self gratification, whatever you can think of and whatever people do, will not produce a child. And yes, homosoexual relations fits into this very broad category. Now, do you really want to apply the term “infertile” to all these activities? If so, you render the term entirely meaningless — which, given your relentless attempts to conflate the distinctions between male and female you seem entirely prepared to do.
So, you’re completely unwilling to consider the concept of “adult human couples who, for whatever reason, cannot bear children” as a category?
That’s fine, but realize, that’s your choice.
Because the concept already exists. It’s not like I made up this idea. The couples are already out there, and they’re asking to be married. If you give, as a response, “No, you are closed to life; you cannot conceive or bear children,” it’s not a non sequitur for those couples to then say, “Uh, wait–there are lots of couples who can get married who can’t conceive or bear children.”
And then you shake your head and laugh at such a silly question, and say, “No, no–those couples are open to life. They just can’t conceive or bear children because they’re infertile.”
Conveniently enough, Jennifer Roback Morse writes about exactly this category when she writes, (Brackets added.)
“[Adult human couples who cannot, for whatever reason, bear children] can not have children without specific legal institutions in place to do two things: first, the rights of at least one of the genetic parents must be terminated. Second, at least one member of the [] couple must have parental rights specifically assigned to them.”
Is the statement above, now that it’s edited, untrue? (It’s a yes or no question. If you really wanted to be a clear blog poster, you could even quote me and then answer directly: yes or no.)
I’ll even answer it first: no, it’s not untrue. It’s just as true, actually, as the statement originally written–equally true.
What’s kind of bizarre about our discussion, Jacobse, is that although you don’t like to consider same-sex couples in the same breath as infertile couples, I’m not the one who originally made the comparison. Morse wrote a list of statements about same-sex couples which detailed their inability to conceive a child. So, even if they’re closed to life, she’s writing about them as if they are “infertile.”
A man who chooses to have relations with a woman who has had an hysterectomy is not infertile either. Would you say, of that couple, then, that she is infertile and he is…a fertile man who is closed to life?
Note 81. Phil writes:
It’s not really the “couple” that is infertile, it’s usually only one partner. You can have two homosexuals coupling all day long who actually are very fertile, that is, producing healthy sperm, and they will never conceive a child.
Now, why do you think that is? Is it because the couple is “infertile?” Or is it because the anal canal is not an organ of reproduction?
As for the quote you want me to answer you lost me here:
Not to sure what you mean here, but I notice whenever language is stretched (“no, it’s not untrue”), the attempt to normalize a deviancy follows right behind.
Here is how it should play out. Men can set up house for themselves, but we won’t call it a marriage, and we won’t give them children to raise.
Fr. Hans writes: “Here is how it should play out. Men can set up house for themselves, but we won’t call it a marriage, and we won’t give them children to raise.”
This is all because it’s a dangerous social experiment, right? The problem is that it’s already happening, and has been happening for decades. There are only estimates to go on, but right now, between adoption, foster parenting, and rearing of natural children, there are probably some hundreds of thousands of children being reared by one or more homosexual parents. Some estimates would put that figure in the low millions, but even the low estimates show large number of children in same-sex households.
So this is already happening, and has been happening. It’s not like we’re talking about one or two children around the country.
The very earliest studies of gay parents go back to the 1950s. As I mentioned before, studies comparing same-sex and homosexual parenting go back to the early 80s. None of these studies have shown children to be disadvantaged by same-sex parenting.
Another source of recent information are the thousands of same-sex households that care for foster children. Many of these children come to foster care with histories of abuse and developmental and emotional problems. They are probably the hardest group of children to care for. Nonetheless there is absolutely no evidence that same-sex households offer worse environments for these children than heterosexual households.
In other words, the dangerous social experiment that you fear has already happened, as well as a large amount of confirming research.
But more importantly, it’s not a social experiment, and never was. This is because you can take ANY sub-group within society and claim that people in that group are not fit to be parents. It wouldn’t have to be homosexuals. It could be atheists, people who don’t have a certain level of education, people under a certain income level, or whatever. If laws against adoption and foster parenting by those groups were in effect for some years, then to repeal those laws would also be a “dangerous social experiment.” There again, research wouldn’t matter, because it would take many generations to know if atheist parenting, or whatever, was acceptable. After all, atheists have no basis for morality. Their children won’t go to church. Atheists are part of the culture of death, atheism was a basis of communism, etc. “Materialistic” research can’t show all the harmful effects of atheism on children. People here would say things like “I’d rather be orphaned with Christ than parented with Satan… ” Allowing adoption by atheists would “legitimize” and “normalize” atheism. Atheism is a horrible sin. Worse yet — there isn’t even any formal research on atheist parenting. None. So how can we allow this? And so on.
In short, your approach works not just with homosexuals, but with most any group that might be traditionally out of favor with the larger society. That approach works, not because any real harm to children can be demonstrated, but simply through overt bias against the group in question.
Phil,
I see what you are trying to do, but you have to accomplish two things:
1) You have to, as Fr. Jacobse and myself have pointed out, stretch, or more accurately change, the meaning of “infertile”. As has already been pointed out, homosexual coupling is by design “infertile”, whereas a man/women is “infertile by accident. This is a basic and important distinction, that is loaded with meaning on all sorts of levels, including on a purely “materialistic” level. Thus the term “infertile” does not apply to homosexual coupling.
2) You have to separate Morse’ arguments from the context. In your case, you are wanting to logically parse her statements with a definition of “infertile” that she does not mean (given the context of the discussion). Even if we accept your definition (which we don’t), simply because a legal conundrum would present itself in similar ways to an “infertile” man/women couple (e.g. a donated sperm from one male to another male/female couple) that does not mean it should be given the same legal/moral/logical weight as with a homosexual “couple”. Why? It comes back to the plumbing (on a strictly material level). Why should the state inject a legal remedy to a situation that is by design broken? It is one thing to inject a remedy to something that is broken by accident, another thing entirely to create a remedy for a situation that was never supposed to “work” in the first place…
Note 84.
Et tu James? How ignorant past generations must have been making such arbitrary distinctions between heterosexual monogamy and all other manner of human relationships. How blind they must have been for making distinctions between such things as thought and behavior, male and female, or even the value of some ideas over others.
Good thing too how the present generation recognizes that what was once held as received wisdom is really foolishness. Let’s obliterate all distinctions altogether!
And yes, handing children over to homosexuals is another one of these grand social experiments, just like single motherhood from the sixties forward. What a dismal failure. So was the family deconstruction of the Great Society. Don’t you understand why so many blacks are in prison, and why black on black crime is at such high levels? Now you want us to believe that giving children over to homosexuals is a mark of social progress, that we should suspend critical judgment because the “data” predicts all will be well in the world, and that the inherent instability of homosexual relationships will be ameliorated by adding children to the mix? Really?
But Jim, if thousands upon thousands of children are already being raised by same-sex couples, isn’t it safe to say that those kids would be better off if the two people raising them were married?
Wouldn’t that mean that people fighting against same-sex marriage are fighting against the best interests of those children, and not for them?
You talk like a political candidate, Jacobse, in that you’re completely unwilling to answer a direct question. I put a statement in quotation marks in post 81 and asked you if it was untrue.
Instead of answering, you call me deviant.
We’re not merely arguing about whether same-sex marriage ought be permitted, we’re also arguing about why or why not it ought be permitted. Don’t fall victim to the partisan “win at all costs” mindset: if you don’t believe SSM should be legal, the reason matters.
Christopher,
But it doesn’t matter what you call it. Morse listed off some negatives of same-sex coupling. Many of these negatives stemmed from the fact that same-sex couples cannot bear children. It doesn’t matter whether you call it “infertile” or “unable to bear children” or “Melvin the Antelope,” the fact is that there are couples already marrying who are unable to bear children.
The fact that they are “infertile by accident” does not give them their own babies.
Note 88.
Well, call me what you will, but your questions are unclear (double negatives and such). Ask me things staight up so I know what you mean. That shouldn’t be too difficult. As for calling you a deviant, here’s my sentence:
Reads to me like a behavior is implied, not a person. For the record, yes, I don’t consider sodomy on a physiological par with heterosexual intercourse (that plumbing thing again, i.e.: the anal canal is not a reproductive organ). In fact, physiologically speaking, the anal canal is not designed for penetration. So yes, sodomy is a deviancy from natural function.
But it doesn’t matter what you call it. Morse listed off some negatives of same-sex coupling. Many of these negatives stemmed from the fact that same-sex couples cannot bear children. It doesn’t matter whether you call it “infertile” or “unable to bear children” or “Melvin the Antelope,” the fact is that there are couples already marrying who are unable to bear children.
It does matter “what you call it”, because there is a real distinction to be made (Fr. Jacobse and I have already pointed the distinction out and why it is important).
Morse argument does not exclude this distinction, on the contrary. Again, it is one thing to provide a remedy (a state recognized “solution” to a non-ideal set of facts) to an otherwise natural (culturally, legally, biologically, etc.) situation, it is another thing entirely to force a remedy (whether it be “marriage” or whatever) unto an un-natural (culturally, legally, biologically, etc.) coupling. In other words, the remedy is a “compromise” already – to apply it to something that is by design a broken situation does not make any sense, and strains the remedy past the point of reasonableness. This is why she says “The needs of same sex couples and opposite sex couples would both be better served by having distinct institutional arrangements, rather than by trying to have one institution serve the needs of both groups.”
Christopher writes: “Why should the state inject a legal remedy to a situation that is by design broken? It is one thing to inject a remedy to something that is broken by accident, another thing entirely to create a remedy for a situation that was never supposed to “work” in the first place…”
That certainly is also an excellent argument for not allowing single heterosexual people to adopt or have foster children.
Phil writes: “But Jim, if thousands upon thousands of children are already being raised by same-sex couples, isn’t it safe to say that those kids would be better off if the two people raising them were married?”
I would think so. That way the interests of the children are better protected. The discussion here often proceeds as if the only benefit of parenting is to the parent. The main benefit is to the child. When a child has two parents, there’s more protection in the event of divorce or the death of a parent.
Fr. Hans writes: “Good thing too how the present generation recognizes that what was once held as received wisdom is really foolishness. Let’s obliterate all distinctions altogether!”
I don’t think it was foolishness at all. People have held all sorts of beliefs throughout history, and challenges to that received wisdom were social experiments. Certainly the Protestant Reformation was a social experiment, successful in some ways, unsuccessful in others. When people believed in the divine right of kings democracy was a radical, unproven social experiment. In fact we Americans often refer to our nation as the “American Experiment.” Eliminating black slavery was a social experiment on a massive scale, as was the original implementation of slavery. The home schooling of recent years was a social experiment contrary to the received wisdom of mandatory public education, and as far as I can tell, a largely successful experiment. Prohibition was a failed social experiment.
So there are all sorts of social experiments. While we do not casually dismiss the received wisdom, the received wisdom is neither inerrant nor eternal. Social experimentation is not necessarily wrong, and the status quo should not always be engraved in stone. At this point we have literally decades of experience with gay parenting and related studies — in fact far more studies than we had with many previous social experiments.
Fr. Hans: “And yes, handing children over to homosexuals is another one of these grand social experiments, just like single motherhood from the sixties forward. What a dismal failure.”
But it’s not “just like.” Remember, even given your view that same-sex parenting is a social experiment, not all social experiments are failures. There is no evidence that same-sex parenting is a failure. You may wish it so, but wishing does not make it so. The is a huge difference between having children reared by poor single women on welfare, and having children reared by successful, educated, economically stable same-sex couples. Right?
Tom C writes: “Why does homosexuality seem to arise more often in highly sophisticated, urban societies than in tribal or agrarian societies?”
I suspect that in tribal and agrarian societies it was supremely important to bear children in order to have more individuals to gather food or work the land. This was not the case in an urban setting.
Note 92. Jim writes:
I wouldn’t be so sure. Divorce hurts children of low income and high income families alike. The absence of a mother or father is felt as keenly whether one is rich or poor.
You embrace homosexual parenting with the naive enthusiasm reminiscent of the feminists when they were busy deconstructing the nuclear family decades back. So assured were they that the constrictions against single motherhood were vestiges of an oppressive patriarchy that had to be overthrown. “Well show them!” they cried. Well, they sure did.
Whenever we try to reconstruct the family into new forms, the children pay the price.
People made the same argument about mixed-race children.
What were the constrictions against single motherhood that had to be overthrown? I thought it was legal for single women to bear children, even before the 1960s.
I’m not sure that your conflation of gay couples with single mothers is appropriate, since gay couples are seeking legal connections between people, and single mothers were seeking to sever legal connections between people.
Like feminists of the past, you’re fighting against marriage.
Note 94. Phil writes:
Phil, why do you refuse to make elementary distinctions? Mixed race children does not deconstruct the nuclear family — its critics notwithstanding.
Feminist theory argued fathers were not essential to childen. Wrong. Homosexualist theory argues since Perry and and Larry love each other, they should be allowed to get married and raise kids as man and wife. Wrong.
Fr. Hans writes: ” . . . why do you refuse to make elementary distinctions?”
One distinction that we have not talked about is the distinction between abstract theorizing and observation of real-world cases.
For example, the Marxist says “Eliminate private property and everything will be wonderful.” That is abstract theorizing, with no basis in reality. Likewise, if someone says “eliminate fathers and everything will be wonderful,” that also is abstract theorizing — that we know, in the real world, is wrong.
In same-sex parenting the situation is much different. The case for same-sex parenting has been developed over decades through the real-world existence of hundreds of thousands of individual cases in which natural, adopted, or foster children have been cared for in homosexual households. These individual cases have been studied literally for decades. The case for same-sex parenting is not based on abstract theorizing, but on real-world experience, observation, and research. It has been endorsed by relevant psychological and medical organizations based on a large volume of real-world research using a variety of methodologies.
At this point, to assert that support for same-sex parenting is tantamount to abstract theorizing is to misunderstand the current state of knowledge on this issue. You could have made that argument fifty years ago; it makes no sense to make it now.
#92 Jim Holman
You wrote:
Tom C writes: “Why does homosexuality seem to arise more often in highly sophisticated, urban societies than in tribal or agrarian societies?”
I suspect that in tribal and agrarian societies it was supremely important to bear children in order to have more individuals to gather food or work the land. This was not the case in an urban setting.
The answer is that in tribal or agrarian societies homosexual behavior would be immediately devastating to survival. In a modern urban setting, with highly specialized division of labor, the effects are more diffuse and not immediately apparent, but over time it would be just as destructive.
Jim – Unlike Dean S., you are very good about responding to questions put to you by others on the blog. I really appreciate that. Could you go one better and respond to this other question I posed:
Society can tolerate a handful of men who behave like Bill Clinton, but what if his behavior with women was practiced by a significantly large percentage of men? Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if every other man was trying to sleep with every other woman on the block?
Likewise, society can tolerate a handful of men who sleep with one another, but if the thing was ever widespread – chaos.
No one has ever explained to me why a desire to do something confers existential status on homosexuals only (it’s who I am). Why can’t someone who engages in pederasty use the it’s who I am line and get away with it?
Phil cannot see the distinctions IMO because he has wholly accepted a cosmology/anthropology that trivializes such distinctions or simply rejects them. The absence or unimportance of such distinctions have become some of the assumptions on which he builds his logic. For him to acknowledge that the assumptions are false would require a big change in the whole fabric of his thought and orientation toward life. He would have to have an epiphany in the full sense of that word. What Orthodox thought he is exposed to here will help him understand the content of the epiphany if it ever occurs, but it will not create the epiphany.
Once again we are faced with question those who disagree with Orthodox thought on this blog refuse to answer explicitly: who is man?
Note 98:
Unlike Jim and Dean S, Phil has displayed in the past the ability to not only acknowledge the existence of, but to “see from” or “understand” another paradigm. In other words, he can internalize viewpoints other than the one he believes to be true and real, and can reason from them.
In fact, the ability to do this was the classic goal of a “liberal” education, something we have lost in our culture because of two things:
1) the “dumbing down” of higher education so that more of the masses can receive diplomas, due to pressures of society and economics
2) the emphasis in higher education on technical facts/reasoning as opposed to liberal reasoning.
He may be stuck on a point or two here, but I believe Phil has the ability to step beyond and start to understand classical Christianity and it’s anthropology. It does not mean he will, but he seems to have the prerequisites (unless I am mistaken).
The point he is making however, fails on it’s own terms, in that his definition of “infertility” and “unable to bear children” does not take into account the important distinctions already mentioned.
Still, it is an interesting question from our perspective Phil, what do you believe to be the answer to the question: What is man?
Tom C notes:
No one has ever explained to me why a desire to do something confers existential status on homosexuals only (it’s who I am). Why can’t someone who engages in pederasty use the it’s who I am line and get away with it?
Or, on an even more basic level, I have noticed an quite strong desire in myself to indulge in anger when someone cuts me off in traffic. Why can’t I identify myself with “road rage”, as in, “it’s who I am”…”I was born that way”. Especially if, the person I hurl my rage at also is a freely consenting adult who also identifies himself as a “rage-er”…;)