Comments on: Ab Hominem Arguments

By: calvin ostrum

calvin ostrum — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 07:24:32 +0000

Hmm, looking arond a little, I see that Enthymeme has been using these sophisticated arguments for quite a while. In the exchange here, for example, he criticizes his interlocutors by telling them that “Any debate about according marriage rights to homosexuals would, I take it, be altogether more nuanced [than they are being] about things.” This is presumably why, a few lines earlier in the very same comment, he gives this highly nuanced claim: “if you have the (legal) right to homosexual marriage, then you have the right to bigamy, to polygamy, to bestiality, to consensual cannibalism, to anything“, and also perhaps why he decides to refer to folks who disagree with him as being “fuckwits”, “asswipes”, and “dumbfucks”…

By: calvin ostrum

calvin ostrum — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 00:07:16 +0000

Enthymeme: I am not missing your point about “bright lines”. Obviously, the cost of administering state policy is a cost that has to be considered, and where possible, minimized, and “bright lines” help that. That goes without saying. However, less bright lines might be better under some circumstances, even if more costly, or one might be able to draw such a line elsewhere, the obvious example being one that simply allows all gay marriage. I just don’t see where you have begun to show the costs of allowing such marriage, with the “thousands of benefits” couples would get, would be so onerous. Or that, in fact, we will necessarily want to continue extending all of these benefits to all married couples anyway, i.e., that we could not alter the benefits and costs of the institution minimally, but in such a manner as to still obtain, without onerous extra costs, the bulk of the original “policy goals” while adding a new one, one that you continue to simply not acknowledge. My “counterargument” for the most part is simply that. Fortunately it does not take a lot of imagination. As for your story of how you managed to escape the “unthought-out (and complacent)” “conventional liberal” position, I am not so sure I believe that. Is there any textual evidence online of your attempts to “mount successful counter-arguments” against these “sophisticated arguments”? The best I can see your arguments rationally doing is suggesting that things are up in the air and require more detailed social-scientific research, and, as well, a process of public reason and negotiation in these “cost benefit” terms. Not some bit flipped in a person’s head from “complacency” to enlightenment. And as for your italicized complaint, as I myself complained in my original comment to Rob, I think this really is conflating two very separate things: one of them quite reasonable and justified, and the other, not. I believe that point has also been made, more or less, by quite a few others in the comments…

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:47:42 +0000

Mr Ostrum, But I am not going to continue trying when, for example, you immediately disparage one of the main benefits of marriage as “facile” . . . This is manifestly false. I did not “immediately disparage” what you claim – without argument – to be a legitimate policy aim. Indeed, I asked you to specify exactly what policy aim was being served (surely not recognition for recognition’s sake?) in the first instance, and how, ostensibly, it is cost justified especially when there are good substitutes for “recognition” (be they “solemn” – your terminology – i.e., religious or ceremonial marriage; or legal – e.g. civil unions). In the second instance, you merely repeated the demand for recognition – again without argument and without addressing my initial response. It was only then that I remarked that it was facile (having already argued for the position), while providing yet another reason as to why it struck me as so (because polyamorists and many polyamorous men may claim to ‘lack recognition’ too). Also, you continue to miss the point of the legal drinking age comparison. I think I have given an adequate explanation for why imperfect legal lines are drawn in practice. The specific examples I used and what they prohibit are irrelevant to the argument. The focus on said irrelevancies is just an ignoratio elenchi. I could just as easily have used drink driving laws to make the same point. Admittedly I was being cheeky about “imagination”, but not so cheeky – because I do think that your impression is mistaken. Essentially, you’re blaming me for not coming up with the counter-arguments you have failed to come up with. If so, then you’re at least as lacking in imagination as I am, innit? More seriously though, you presume, without cause, that I have not attempted to anticipate – in an imaginative manner – some of the objections to the anti-gay marriage position (when indeed it would benefit any dogmatist to – since he would be all the harder to refute in the event); that my position was arrived at without prolepsis: implicitly, that my position on gay marriage is dogma, and only being justified post hoc. This is unfair. My previous unthought-out (and complacent) position on the issue was the conventional liberal one. Having encountered some of the more sophisticated arguments against gay marriage, and having been unable to mount a successful counter-argument against these (not for lack of trying), I changed my position; it’s as simple as that. Of course, it may be that I’m wrong. I was ready to be convinced, had any of the philosophers/economists/soi-disant intellectuals here bothered to engage Burgess-Jackson seriously instead of merely piling on for a spot of conservative bashing. (This is not to impugn Mr Holbo – he was being humorous, and humour is always excused – but his commentators were not.) Hence my exasperation. That said, I don’t think there are simple answers as to whether or not we should legalize gay marriage; but on the merits, I am inclined against.

By: Calvin Ostrum

Calvin Ostrum — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 02:35:27 +0000

Enythmeme: Although it’s certainly possible, I decline to get further involved in all of this putative cost-benefit analysis that magically comes out just the way you want it. Or, perhaps not so magically. You seemed to have missed the point of my reference to your imagination, by suggesting I am contradicting myself in attributing to you at one point not enough imagination, and then at another point, too much imagination. But your varying imagination is just the point: you can turn your imagination on full power to get things to put on one side of the cost-benefit analysis, but apparently you don’t even try to engage it when it comes to the other side. (I’ll grant you in the specific case, though, that it is probably my similar error to call “fanciful” the idea of criminals taking advantage of the privilege of spousal immunity. I’m correcting that now). And as far as your assuredness that I am the one lacking imagination goes, well, perhaps. But you are the one who, based on a “cost-benefit analysis” (that would seem to many to be post-hoc special pleading) wants to deny to a large specific group of people something they consider to be a fundamental right. The onus would seem to be more on you to be the imaginative one to put some effort into finding a way to allow this right without onerous costs. On me, too, and all of us really, so I tried to provide some simple possibilities. You are obviously much smarter than me—instead of just smugly shooting them down, maybe you should try to come up with your own! Anyway, despite all this, if there are some folks who really want to try a cost-benefit analysis here in a dispassionate manner, by all means I hope they try. But I am not going to continue trying when, for example, you immediately disparage one of the main benefits of marriage as “facile”, and compare denying this benefit to a large specific class of people forever to uniformly restricting everyone’s right to legally drink for just a couple of years, without showing any attempt at trying to define a differing “bright line” that still gets you all of your “policy goals”. And if we want to talk about child rearing, we should talk explicitly about that and what things we could do to improve it. Like welfare rights, good jobs for working families, a better education system, affordable housing, bans on corporal punishment, restriction of religious schools, the drug war, etc. Gay marriage probably isn’t even on the radar in comparison. But all of this is even more off-topic for this thread, and even harder to reasonably address in short compass.

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:25:41 +0000

Mr Ostrum, You don’t think that the issue of marriage being a solemn recognition of the importance of a couple’s pair bond, regardless of whether they choose to have children, is a “policy benefit”, and that denying it has “costs”, for example. Why not include those costs and benefits? But what exactly are these? I have expressed puzzlement as to what other policy aims might be served, but you have not specified. “Recognition” for recognition’s sake – however gratifying – seems to me a facile reason. For on that count many polyamorists can also claim to lack recognition in the eyes of the law. You suggest it would be too costly to restrict marriage more narrowly to what you say it really is good for (childrearing), but your attempts to actually measure those costs seem rather half-hearted and you don’t seem to use much imagination to figure out how such costs could be limited or avoided. There are over a thousand Federal rights and benefits. I can only give some indicia of what the likely costs and benefits are. Of course I can’t give a comprehensive account with respect to all of them – only to some of the more significant ones. If indeed I lack imagination, then I’m prepared to be convinced; but be assured that I too think the shoe is on the other foot. For example, how is determining whether people are lying about their intention to have children some serious cost? Because 1. people may lie about their intentions for the indefinite future and you’d be none the wiser; 2. coercive questioning of millions of couples in an effort to determine the truth of their claims takes up resources, may be ineffective for reason 1. – and if the regime were especially draconian – would create a disincentive to get married in the first place, thereby defeating the original policy aim of marriage, in addition to incurring costs. Let them have a licence ahead of time, so they can start to build an environment for the little tyke, but rescind it if the tyke never shows up. Big deal. Yeah, easy for you to say. The problem with this is that it creates a pressure on married couples to have children – even if they aren’t ready for them; even if they no longer intend to have children – just so they preserve their marital status. How does this encourage the welfare of the child, implicit in the policy aim of marriage? Indeed, how does it not encourage a palpable harm – that of inducing a decision to have children in onerous circumstances? You compare forever forbidding some people to marry with temporarily restricting someone (for a couple of years or so) from drinking. Doesn’t something seem just a little amiss there to you? No, because you’re missing the point of the comparison, which was meant to show that the law in practice has to draw bright if imperfect lines at the least cost by using proxies (age, sex) as indicia for maturity in the one case and propensity to have children in the other. Which is why merely pointing out some counter-examples won’t cut the mustard. You suggest that lots of people would like to have polygamous marriages. Well, where are all those clamoring for this? Old School Mormons? Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness? Muslims? – polygamy is after all permitted under Sharia law. Non-religious polyamorists? You forget that a lot of the clamoring for gay marriage is done by people who are NOT gay. Perhaps the notion of polygamy doesn’t quite accord with what liberals intuit as an ‘oppressed class’, hence the comparative lack of clamoring – despite the fact that the usual arguments trotted out for the former may just as well be used to justify the latter. I doubt there will ever be many takers for this, though: it seems that traditionally, most polygamous marriage have been assertions of power rather that autonomously chosen relations between equals. Traditionally, so was marriage. And your point is? Neither are there many gays, who like polyamorists, are a relative minority. Again, your point is? You dream up all sorts of things, like, apparently, some nasty criminal marrying his nasty accomplice so they don’t have to testify against one another. Isn’t this rather fanciful? Wait – I thought I lacked imagination; now I’m suffering from a surfeit of it. At any event, argument from incredulity. In any case, if you are so concerned with rational policy formation and all the costs associated with marriage, why not drop this spousal immunity thing all together? What is its logical relation to child-rearing? Because the doctrinaire rationale for spousal immunity happens to hold: it fosters trust between husband and wife, thereby contributing, as a general rule, to marital stability. Even if the rationale were unsound, it is still a given, and barring a revision of laws cannot be excluded in the tally of externalities. In general, where is your analysis that the current bundle of costs and benefits is just as it should be? In the original thread, and in this one. Your defense of letting old codgers without any young kids marry seems to be rather weak. You tar gay marriages for not being able to rear children, but then you want to restrict what they are allowed to have, civil unions, so that they cannot adopt. At one point, then, child rearing is a “benefit” when it suits you, but at another point, it is a “cost” you cannot allow civil unions to impose on us. There is no contradiction, unless you’re being deliberately obtuse. I have addressed this point repeatedly in this as well as the original thread. See my reply to Mr Holbo, particularly the paragraph referencing Posner. . . . There’s a lot of gap to fill between principle and policy and it can be filled with all sorts of plausible storys by a good story teller, to end up at the policy he likes on other grounds. And yet you do not provide a plausible alternative story?

By: calvin ostrum

calvin ostrum — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:54:27 +0000

Enthymeme, I grant that one can come up with some arguments against gay marriage (although your arguments seem to have a few steps missing): my main reason for posting here was to comment on KBJ and not on the substantive issues per se. However, since I did make a few comments about your post, I’ll give at least one reply, even though I don’t know if you are serious. I would claim you base too much on some “cost benefit” analysis, without any real attempt to carefully measure the costs and benefits to see on what side things come out. Ironically, by the way, this is a rather “liberal” way of approaching the issue of defending an “organic”, “conservative” institution. You don’t think that the issue of marriage being a solemn recognition of the importance of a couple’s pair bond, regardless of whether they choose to have children, is a “policy benefit”, and that denying it has “costs”, for example. Why not include those costs and benefits? You suggest it would be too costly to restrict marriage more narrowly to what you say it really is good for (childrearing), but your attempts to actually measure those costs seem rather half-hearted and you don’t seem to use much imagination to figure out how such costs could be limited or avoided. For example, how is determining whether people are lying about their intention to have children some serious cost? Let them have a licence ahead of time, so they can start to build an environment for the little tyke, but rescind it if the tyke never shows up. Big deal. You compare forever forbidding some people to marry with temporarily restricting someone (for a couple of years or so) from drinking. Doesn’t something seem just a little amiss there to you? You suggest that lots of people would like to have polygamous marriages. Well, where are all those clamoring for this? Perhaps this will be the next step: polygamous marriages between equals. I doubt there will ever be many takers for this, though: it seems that traditionally, most polygamous marriage have been assertions of power rather that autonomously chosen relations between equals. You dream up all sorts of things, like, apparently, some nasty criminal marrying his nasty accomplice so they don’t have to testify against one another. Isn’t this rather fanciful? In any case, if you are so concerned with rational policy formation and all the costs associated with marriage, why not drop this spousal immunity thing all together? What is its logical relation to child-rearing? In general, where is your analysis that the current bundle of costs and benefits is just as it should be? Your defense of letting old codgers without any young kids marry seems to be rather weak. You tar gay marriages for not being able to rear children, but then you want to restrict what they are allowed to have, civil unions, so that they cannot adopt. At one point, then, child rearing is a “benefit” when it suits you, but at another point, it is a “cost” you cannot allow civil unions to impose on us. Just a few considerations. One last remark as a general point. Although I harbour significant consquentialist tendencies, I am still a little annoyed by the way that a consequentialist can hand-wave to provide some kind of justification for about whatever policy he wants. There’s a lot of gap to fill between principle and policy and it can be filled with all sorts of plausible storys by a good story teller, to end up at the policy he likes on other grounds.

By: rob

rob — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:46:36 +0000

Calvin Ostrum, it’s just so tempting when they do just make assertions (enthymeme, this is KBJ, not you: you clearly have an argument), especially when they email me, ask if I have an argument or just insults – I was nasty about KBJ in an earlier thread – and then don’t reply when I provide one. It’s a bit snide I suppose, but…

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:55:29 +0000

Another point re: recognition. Many males, I daresay, are polyamorous. Does the non-recognition of that particular form of union mean that a vast underclass of males are second class citizens unrecognized by the law? Of course not. Same deal with gay marriage. Of course, one may object that same sex couplehood is the very essence of homosexuality, and that failure to recognize that is tantamount to disenfranchisement, as some of the more hysterical commentators here have remarked. Implicit in that objection is that male heterosexuals have a perfectly good substitute for polyamorous behaviour – namely, monogamy – something that homosexual couples, absent gay marriage, do not have. But if so, this spurs the rejoinder: why can’t civil unions be an adequate substitute for same sex marriage in the way marriage is for polyamorous unions? After all, it may be contended that polyamorous behaviour has a basis in biology, and goes to the essence of what it is to be male.

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:23:45 +0000

abb1, How is ‘civil union’ legally dissimilar? Abrogated rights and benefits. In the case of the US, Federal benefits omitted; in the Netherlands and some Scandinavian countries, limited adoption rights, inter alia. If you view ‘marriage’ as a policy instrument, why all this talk about ‘traditional meaning’? This is a completely different venue and I don’t think this venue is particularly promising for your side. Why can’t the traditional meaning of marriage comport with the policy aim of the institution? At any event, this has been adequately explained in my earlier answer to this question: it may refer to how Americans understand the term; but it does not follow that the arguments against gay marriage is a semantical one. Mr Ostrum, Enthymeme: Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to tie justification of the institution of marriage so tightly to child-rearing? Lots of married couples do not have children, despite what you say. I never denied that “lots” do not have children. But most do. So no, it is not a stretch to tie marriage to child rearing. I mean, what other policy aims are there that would be encouraged by the structure of our family/marriage laws? If not children, then what? Moreover, heterosexuality is a reasonable proxy for assessing whether the couple in question intend to have children or not. It could be that the demographics change with time, and with it, our lines of demarcation. Couldn’t we avoid all these horrendoues costs of marriage you refer to (what exactly are those, that do not also accrue to “civil unions”) by not letting people get married until they exhibit clear intentions to have children? But how would you ascertain intention without incurring prohibitive costs (one can lie about intentions, obviously), other than using heterosexuality as a reasonable proxy? And I’ve already mentioned a few costs that might accrue to marriage and not civil unions – spousal evidentiary immunity and (possibly) adoption rights. Don’t let old people or sterile people get married either. But people often don’t know they are sterile until they try for children. And how do you propose to find out if a woman is indeed menopausal without violating doctor-patient confidentiality? Or indeed, what if the parties in question do not consent to fertility testing in the first place? Further, you discount the fact that many old people already have children – perhaps from previous marriages – and should not therefore (having served the policy aim) be excluded from the institution should a partner die early. What about the fact that marriage also represents for many a solemn recognition of two people’s deep loving committment to one another as life-partners? Why should people who are capable of entering such a committment be denied having that committment recognized when others are allowed to have it recognized? Well, if this is a question of “recognition” then I’m not sure what policy aim is being served so as to justify the costs involved. I don’t think “recognition” is a legitimate justification (recognition may after all be obtained via other ceremonial or religious means – your parish might recognize your union, for e.g. – without the costs that legal recognition entail) in light of the costs involved, however gratifying it might be for those who bear only a part of it. Again, this is not to say that our demarcations hold in perpetua. Autres temps, autres moeurs, and with justification too, should the future makeup of society warrant it.

By: Calvin Ostrum

Calvin Ostrum — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:53:27 +0000

Enthymeme: Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to tie justification of the institution of marriage so tightly to child-rearing? Lots of married couples do not have children, despite what you say. Couldn’t we avoid all these horrendoues costs of marriage you refer to (what exactly are those, that do not also accrue to “civil unions”) by not letting people get married until they exhibit clear intentions to have children? Don’t let old people or sterile people get married either. What about the fact that marriage also represents for many a solemn recognition of two people’s deep loving committment to one another as life-partners? Why should people who are capable of entering such a committment be denied having that committment recognized when others are allowed to have it recognized? Rob: I do not think you can appeal so glibly to stock conservative ideology to adequately account for the pathologies of AnalMan and DissectingLeftismMan. Many conservatives are devoted enough to reason to realize that they have to have arguments for their positions, and they try to supply such arguments. (Consider contemporary conservatives such as Kekes and Scruton for example). Their traditionally less optimistic view about the powers of reason does not abjure its use altogether, but simply suggests that attempts to use reason to remake society are bound to fail because society is simply too poorly understood (perhaps essentially so) to make such attempts successful. Okay, some conservatives go further than this, but they still, if decent, try to provide arguments for their position. Admittedly, only at the most abstract level, which might allow them to ignore specific issues, or even, simply, lie about them (cf. Scruton below). I suppose you might also be vindicated by the fact that AnalMan himself provides a highly exaggerated charicature of the relation of liberals and conservatives to reason, but then again he also complains that liberals “emote” where conservatives “cogitate”, so that’s pretty much a wash. And there remains the fact that both he and DLM whine that liberals won’t dare to face them on the battleground of reasoned argument. I also find it interesting that he quotes Scruton as apparently describing liberals being those who like to engage in what he calls “the joyous work of falsehood”. I can’t verify that quote, but it is interesting given that Scruton is quite aware that playing loose with the truth is part and parcel of a archetypical conservative position: “Like Plato, a conservative may have to advocate the Noble Lie. He might in all conscience seek to propagate the ideology which sustains the social order, whether or not there is a reality that corresponds to it.”

By: abb1

abb1 — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 08:02:51 +0000

How is ‘civil union’ legally dissimilar? If you view ‘marriage’ as a policy instrument, why all this talk about ‘traditional meaning’? This is a completely different venue and I don’t think this venue is particularly promising for your side.

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:55:39 +0000

Mr Holbo, Even if you thought that gays would tend to be bad parents – which I think is a rather silly thought but I’m not prepared to club it senseless tonight – there are lots of types of folks who tend to be bad parents, who are allowed to marry and have kids. Back, forth, I win the argument in about two more steps, if I make no mistake. The mistake is that a counterexample won’t cut it – there are lots of types of folks who are of legal drinking age yet tend to be immature, just as there are teenagers who are underaged yet may be mature enough to handle drink. Should we therefore lower the legal drinking age? Of course not. Yet the law has to draw the line somewhere. I pass no judgment as to the competence of same sex parents (although an argument may be made for the incompetence – due to a higher degree of promiscuity – of male homosexual parents: see Posner, “Economics and the Social Construction of Homosexuality”, Overcoming Law pp. 575-76), just as I pass no judgment as to the competence of the single parent. The single mother may be doing her best for the child but clearly her situation is not the optimum one. The child’s developmental psychology could be impaired by the lack of an anchoring father figure or the absence of maternal attachment. And this is an inherent structural defect of deviant family units. As far as I know, research in this area is comparatively scarce and inconclusive. More importantly, most heterosexual couples have children. By contrast, do a majority of same sex couples adopt, where they can? I do not think so (absent the data, I can’t be sure; but anecdotally speaking, none of the people I know can be bothered to). In which case why should we extend marriage with its attendant rights and pecuniary benefits to a class of people who 1. don’t usually have children 2. may not be optimal child rearers? These rights and benefits are also costs_ for the rest of society. That there are financial costs is obvious; but there are also negative externalities that may arise from e.g., the exploitation of spousal evidentiary immunity by non-gay persons. Gay marriage is therefore not a species of self-regarding conduct. As such, should we incur the costs of legalizing gay marriage while not furthering the ostensible policy aim of marriage? If forced in the courts, I would say no (because the spectre of polysexual polyamorous marriage would double the costs and externalities and then some). As for the folks who tend to be bad parents having kids, there’s a more prosaic reason as to why a law regulating their behaviour is not a good idea: because heterosexual couples will have kids anyway, married or not. So of course we’d rather have the institution, thereby encouraging stable family units, etc etc etc – because they’d have children anyway and be the worse for the wear otherwise. The thing that makes the analogy not just unfortunate but totally unreasonable is that K B-J is hereby implying not just that he, personally, advocates cleavage to a narrow concept of marriage. He is saying that no alternative conception is conceivable. But that’s silly. He’s saying it doesn’t make sense in the light of the policy aim of marriage. Just like it wouldn’t make sense to classify nicotine patches as a nicotine product for the legal purpose of a consumer tax the aim of which is to discourage smoking (since imposing a tax on the product – which is meant to wean and ultimately discourage smokers from smoking -would raise its price, thereby defeating the aim of the tax in the first place). abb1, Quick one (gotta run soon). But I really don’t understand your objection to schmarriage (aka ‘civil union’) and your analogy with nicotine patches. ??? I understood schmarriage to be marriage, with the same legal rights and benefits – just given some other name. It’s not civil union, which is legally dissimilar. As for the patch analogy – same sex couples are analogous to the patches. Marriage is analogous to the tax (in that both are policy instruments).

By: HP

HP — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 21:04:17 +0000

Whatever forms marriage has had over the millenia it is centered on children, on the production and nurturing of children. Close, but no cigar. You can produce and nurture children like crazy outside of marriage. Marriage is traditionally about the establishment of unambiguous paternity, and therefore patrimony. The Cartoon History of the Universe had an interesting take on this (not that I’m citing it as an authority). As I recall, an ancient shepherd watches his ewe giving birth to a lamb, points to the lamb, and says “Mine!” He then goes to the village, and there sees a small group of women and a large group of children. He scratches his head, and says, “????” The next step involves a marriage ritual and the establishment of laws against adultery (with punishments such as stoning). The shepherd now looks at the small group of women and the large group of children, and says, “Mine!” I would argue that the current debate about gay marriage is not about changing the “traditional” definition of marriage. It is about establishing a brand new definition of marriage. Paternity, of course, is now a matter of DNA. We’ve been going on for half-a-century or so with the “when two people love each other very much” contemporary definition of marriage, and there’s no logical reason why that shouldn’t apply to homosexuals. The only way to argue against homosexual marriage is to throw out the traditional definition (unambiguous paternity), throw out the contemporary definition (two people very much in love), and establish some new definition, based on somehow establishing the predominant circumstances of marriage as the new purpose for marriage. Frankly, having married someone I loved very much, who by all accounts loved me very much, and yet getting divorced in spite of it, I happen to think the “when two people love each other very much” definition of marriage deserves to be scrapped. I’m not sure that’s what conservatives are arguing; however, I do think that will be the result. Suppose schmarriage were an option for homosexuals: I do not think you could legally deny heterosexual couples the right to schmarry, if that’s what they choose. If a non-marriage legal union were available, and open to all couples regardless of sexual identity, I think marriage rates would plummet to the point of irrelevance in short order. I know that if I had the option of schmarriage instead of marriage, I would choose it in a heartbeat (assuming, of course, a willing partner—sigh).

By: rob

rob — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:04:37 +0000

Like I said bloody ages ago, conservatives don’t believe in the value of reason (or at least not in the same way as liberals). They think it’s a load of transcendentalist bullshit, which tells us nothing about the world and how it ought to be, like Hume and Burke. The wisdom of the ages, enshrined in the social contracts of our ancestors, is far preferable. So of course it’s not surprising that they don’t engage in reasoned debate, because they don’t like the reasoned part, just as I suppose appeal to outmoded and romantic notions of marriage is not surprising either. Maybe we have misunderstood KBJ’s argument then: asserting that x is how it ought to be done (according to the wisdom of the ages) is an argument to him.

By: Calvin Ostrum

Calvin Ostrum — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 16:15:11 +0000

I really don’t understand. B-J claims that people don’t address his arguments, but it seems to me that they do, despite the fact he makes it difficult by not allowing comments or trackbacks on his blog, and by (apparently) never showing up at a blog where comments and trackbacks do allow an exchange. Instead he stays hidden away and whines about liberals this and liberals that. The same seems to go for Dissecting Leftism Man, John Ray. No comments or trackbacks allowed, along with the claim that the “Leftists are too grand to debate anything with conservatives”.