nice copypasta

>>356916
lololololololol

There are no rational arguments against gay marriage. Only religious arguments.

>>356935
Well, there's the argument that allowing gays to marry would open the door for people to want legislation passed to marry animals. But that isn't really rationale either.

I've yet to hear a rational argument as to why the state should play any role in any marriage, gay or straight.

Consenting adults should be able to get a civil union from the state, which grants them property rights, hospital visitation, etc. A marriage license, however, should come from private institutions, like churches.

People can choose which marriages they believe to be real, based on their personal beliefs.

I shouldn't be forced to subsidize homosexual cohabitation because it has no positive impact on myself or the nation as a whole.

If certain people or groups feel that homosexuality should be incentivized they should form a charity and do it out of their own pocket.

There is no rationale, conservatives just want a theocracy.

>>356952
The costs associated with filing a marriage license are covered by a fee.

>>356952
Does it really have any negative impact either?

gays are the new blacks, basically. the fact that the majority of black people oppose gay marriage is a funny little hypocrisy, as the arguments used to justify a ban on gay marriage were all used to justify a ban on interracial marriage.

>>356948
One is about consenting adults living their lives freely. We don't regard an animal as being able to give consent so the libertarian argument about consenting adults does not apply. Same thing with children. The only additional thing I see it opening up is polygamy/polyandry which should also be legal if it involves consenting adults.
>>356949
Agree 100% As far as I'm concerned Florida should call my marriage a civil union and I would only be considered married in the eyes of the Lutheran Church and anyone who chooses to accept that marriage.

I support gay marriage.

2 gay men = tons of earning power. They should be allowed to raise children, and their family size will probably be bigger than a male female marriage because of this.


And if they have kids it will be through surrogacy and this is good because the surrogacy industry needs to grow and become mainstream.

>>356960
It's also funny because blacks all voted for Obama, but also voted against prop 8

>>356958
What about all the other costs? Like lost revenue caused by allowing men to claim other adult males as dependents.

>>356959
It costs taxpayer's money.

>>356966
for prop 8*

>>356952
>collectivist bullshit from someone who is probably otherwise a "rugged individualist" Republican Christian or simply trolling

My rational argument against gay marriage is that gays are mentally unbalanced and physically and biologically inferior to heterosexuals.

They are a roadblock on the path to the Super Race.

obligatory

>>356967
Then why not outlaw all marriage if it's just about money?

Seriously, why don't you respect this mans political opinions?

two people sage copypasta, then the op samefags or trollfeeding retards save the thread.

gj /new/

>>356974
Or not give special incentives for it. As far as I'm concerned marriage should provide no special benefits apart from shared property rights, hospital visitation and the like.

>>356970
In what way is a support of personal property rights "collectivist bullshit"?

The belief that the government has no right to confiscate wealth from its citizens for spending on useless pet projects which some people have an emotional attachment to is basically the polar opposite of collectivism.

>>356967
Actually, allowing gay marriage increases revenue, mainly through sales tax on items and services purchased for the weddings.

Source: http://www.smartvoter.org/2008/11/04/ca/state/prop/8/

>>356960
>gays are the new blacks, basically.

>>356971
>rational argument
>gays are mentally unbalanced
[citation needed]

>>356974
Because then were would we get a next generation of taxpayers from?

Women at home making babies is good for the country.

Men at home trimming their anal hair for when their gay lover gets home is not beneficial for anyone at all.

>>356983
>post a reaction image
>no argument

>>356980
Allowing one set of people to access tax incentives and disallowing another isn't exactly fair. The government is at least supposed to pretend it's being fair to everyone, right?

>>356986
I'll just let you figure out what was wrong with that statement.

>>356952
>Implying anyone wants to subsidize your kids or marriage.

>>356985
We're not trending towards a completely gay America and we never will. I don't think we'll have any problem increasing population any time soon.

>>356982
No, it causes a net loss for taxpayers.

Your source doesn't even claim what you are claiming, it just says "maybe" and makes some unsupported assertions about revenue from sales tax.

It also completely ignores the lost tax revenues and the costs associated with gay marriage (for example paying for the courts to prosecute people and enforce laws recognizing gay marriage).

You would have to be absolutely insane to honestly believe that homosexual marriage will be a net generator of revenue for the government. It's completely and utterly ridiculous, unfounded, and contradicts all basic logic and empirical evidence.

>They think EVERYTHING is about taxes!

>>356989
Should people who do not farm qualify for subsidies aimed at farming?

Should oil companies qualify for subsidies for green technology even if they don't invest in any green technology?

>>356990
>implying no gay people have even been killed for being gay
Sup dude.
In before you claim what happened to me doesn't count.

>>356997
Happiness is too expensive, it should be banned.

>>357005
You're welcome to spend your own money on making yourself happy. Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to make you happy.

BAWWWWW, IT MIGHT COST US A LITTLE FOR OTHER PEOPLES RIGHTS!! BAWWWW I WANT MY PRECIOUS JEWGOLDS

>>357006
Then make a god damned being gay married tax, fuck you man.

>>357008
This

>>357008
>RIGHTS

Marriage subsidies are not a right, they are a privilege.

If they were a right then even unmarried people would qualify for them.

I just think that Marriage as a legal institution is a violation of separation of church and state. Call everything a civil union, allow homo- and heterosexual civil unions. The let gay marriage be up to the discretion of your local church.

>>357002
You guys trot that twink out at every opportunity.

A few things about Matt Shepard:
1. There was one of him, as opposed to thousands upon thousands of lynchings of black people.
2. He groped a man in a bar and made drunken passes at him after being told the guy wasn't gay.

I would have kicked that faggots teeth in as well.

>>357014
You're missing the point, unmarried people have the opportunity to qualify for it. Gay people don't have a chance in hell. If it really costs the government that much more money for people to be married, and you hold so strong to your fiscal convictions, you should never get married or have children then.

>>356999
>>356999
>>356999

>>357014
What I'm seeing in this thread as the argument against legalizing gay marriage is that it'll cost tax payers money.

>>357011
Or we can just not waste the money in the first place.

Nobody is preventing homosexuals from having a wedding ceremony, wearing a fancy dress, buying a cake, making vows, and being monogamous together.

The only issue here is that gays are unwilling to not push their views on others so they won't be happy until every taxpaying American has been forced by the government to subsidize and offer cash incentives for homosexual behaviour.

It's really quite obnoxious.

>>357006
Your argument applies to all marriage, not just gay marriage. Under that theory, nobody could get married, because potential litigation and tax write-offs are too expensive.

>>357019
There are thousands of cases of gay bashing a year. you sound like the kind of person that perpetrates them. Matt Shepard is only one of many. You probably think his murderers deserve to be freed.

But its OK, I think your homophobic rhetoric has exposed you to pretty much everyone here as a troll or a bigot, no big deal. I will take your anger as an admission that you lost the argument and you have absolutely nothing left to say.

Please continue to post reaction images, as we all know, being able to make a coherent argument comes second to posting offensive pictures on /new/.

>>357023
>you should never get married or have children then

How so? Marriage is subsidized precisely to encourage child rearing.

If I get married and have children I will be doing my part and contributing back to the nation and the taxpayers who helped support me.

>>357030

Or we can just not waste the money in the first place.

Nobody is preventing blacks from having a wedding ceremony, wearing a fancy dress, buying a cake, making vows, and being monogamous together.

The only issue here is that blacks are unwilling to not push their views on others so they won't be happy until every taxpaying American has been forced by the government to subsidize and offer cash incentives for African-American behaviour.

It's really quite obnoxious.

>>356997
You seem to be overly concerned with what is good for the state. Fuck the state, it is only valuable insofar as it protects individual rights.

>>357039
touche

>>357035
>homophobic rhetoric

See, this is the problem. People can't even have a conversation with you guys without being accused of being a "homophobic bigot". You're honestly just a bunch of self-centered idiots that need to fuck off. You're absolutely NOTHING like black people during the civil rights movement.

Are you just trolling?

>>357034
Normal marriages can produce children. That is what the taxpayers are subsidizing it for.

Gays cannot produce children. There is no logical reason that they should qualify for marriage subsidies.

But then if people operated on logic this wouldn't even be an issue. The pro-gay leftists are driven purely by their emotions and have very little capacity for logic or rationality.

>>356960
don't you dare compare gays to blacks. are you going to really compare SLAVERY to not being able to get married? fuck you

>>356985
Gay people wouldn't be out having Baby's, regardless of marriage, would they?

>>357035
>There are thousands of cases of gay bashing a year.

Really? Post a few.

Lets see the statistics on these "thousands" of violent assaults on gay people simply for being gay.

>>357047
Close. Marriage is about providing a stable home for children. People have children out of wedlock all the time. Married gay parents can provide such a stable household, which is more likely to produce productive citizens.

>>357047
So what if gays don't receive those tax incentives unless they adopt a child?

>>357047
>SLAVERY to not being able to get married?

Actually it is not even as bad as "not being able to get married". They are welcome to get married, have a big ceremony, and be monogamous. Nobody is preventing them from getting married.

The issue here is that they want taxpayers to pick up the tab.

>>357049
I didn't compare slavery to anything, you are using a straw man logical fallacy. I said that basically gays today are being regarded in the same way blacks were during the civil rights movement. Every argument against gay marriage was used to try to ban inter-racial marriage. If you can't read, it is best not to respond until you learn how. That, or learn how to address the actual argument, not the one you created in your mind.

http://community.statesboroherald.com/blogs/detail/7463/

http://community.statesboroherald.com/blogs/detail/7445/

>>357047
What about infertile people? Should they not be allowed to marry? My uncle is infertile, but was married. Adopted two children and raised them up just like a faggot might.

My wife and I are both fertile I assume, but we probably won't have children.

>>357055
http://gaylife.about.com/od/hatecrimes/a/statistics.htm

owned yet again.

In before you attack the website's address, all the information contained is referenced from the FBI and other government agencies. Checkmate, bigot.

People shouldn't be forced to subsidize children.

Gay Marriage is bad for the Empire.

>>357060
How about if no one receives special benefits unless someone unless they have dependents?

>>357066
No, you specifically called gays the "new blacks".

You have no fucking idea how retarded that sounds when you spout it, and when called on it you make up silly arguments to attempt to justify your idiotic claim.

Just get the fuck out.

>>357075
Fact is, these statistics report things like arguments in the workplace, fistfights, etc.

This is not in any way comparable to lynchings and being dragged behind pickup trucks.

Face it, you made a stupid argument in your attempt to gain sympathy and it backfired when /new/ called you on it. Go back to DU if you want to rant and rave about how "hard" it is to be a gay man in America.

>>357047
While I clearly disagree with your statements, I have to thank you for having an argument I hadn't heard before, as was the point of the thread.

>>357081
again, what about calling gays the "new blacks" references slavery? If I were to call them the "new muslims" would you think I was referring to terrorism? Probably, because you allow certain issues to override the definition of the race as a whole.

I'd also like to point out your venomous tone doesn't make you any more right than me. You're only using it to go on the offensive, rather than rebuke my initial claim, which is still valid.

So you want a non-religious argument against an institution that is inherently religeous. . . WHY?

You fuckers should have a much bigger problem with the government giving benefits to people who've gone through some arcane religious ritual. .. NOT be clammoring to be accepted enough to "OH PRETTY PLEASE CAN I HAS" go through the same bullshit ritual yourselves. . . makes me sad and sick.

>>357087
Nice backpedaling. You got your evidence, now you try to claim it doesn't count. I'm not trying to say gays have suffered from discrimination just as much as blacks have. I am saying that they and blacks have something in common, suffering caused by prejudice and bigotry.

I don't know about you, but even a little discriminatory violence against a minority is unacceptable. If you don't, that is your opinion, just expect to be called on it.

the government should not recognize marriage of any kind. it should be just like saying you have a boyfriend or girlfriend in 3rd grade. if you want to put it on paper fine, but the government shouldn't recognize that piece of paper.
the only place government should ever get involved is with custody of children and ownership of property.

single people and unmarried people are discriminated against because they have to pay higher taxes. fuck that.

>>357096
Marriages exist outside the realm of religion.

Being forced to help pay for someone else's marriage and kids??

Sounds like SOCIALISM to me.

How about that the majority of the population gets to define what marriage is or is not, not the minority. Every single referendum to legalize gay marriage has failed.

>>357110
Socialism? That's almost COMMUNISM!

Gays must be trying to try our country into a godless communist state.

>>357089
It specifically references slavery. It's not just you, this is a claim that the entire gay community attempts to push.

>>357111
You know prop 8 was bullshit.

Also, if the public is always right, why don't we have a direct democracy?

Because the majority of people are retarded.

>>357103
i completely agree with you good sir, no one should get tax benefits and special treatment because of marriage. but how would we change something big like that?

>>357117
>You know prop 8 was bullshit.

How was it bullshit? The people of a state voted. Are you saying that voting is bullshit?

>>357130
There was a huge misinformation campaign helping out Prop 8.

>>357122
i don't know, but IMO, marriage is a religious institution.
partnership is not.
when government recognizes marriage, it is a violation of the separation of church and state.

>>357132
But haven't they had public votes on this issue in other states that have turned up the same results each time?

>>357116
"Black people" is not synonymous with "Slavery". The comparison is made to draw parallels between the gay rights movement of today and black "civil" rights movement which is still ongoing, but became recognized in the 50's, 60's, and 70's.

You still have posted no argument as to how it "specifically" references slavery. I see convenient images you must have on hand for discussions like this one, but no connection between the term "black" and "slavery". Your argument boils down to this, you THINK it references slavery, so it does. That is pretty much all you've been able to establish in this entire thread.

i understand that you are a bigot, and you will go to any length to avoid looking like you one. But if you want to convince people, start speaking some sense, instead of trying to get points on someone who sees your kind of bullshit on a daily basis and can rip it apart without any effort.

>>357141
The majority is always right.

>>357114
I was referring to ANY marriage.

>>357122
>but how would we change something big like that?
Exactly. This is why they campaign for same-sex marriage instead of having the government ignore marriage all together. It's much more achievable.

>>357159
>It's much more achievable.
but it's wrong.

this is one big example of republicans not even understanding their own principles.
rather than fighting to ban gay marriage, they should argue that government should have no say in it.
same with the abortion issue.
it would make sense to fight socialized health care if they also fought these things, making the argument for small government valid.

>>357159
It might be more achievable but it's still terrible. Seriously, does anyone have any good ideas on how we could put an end to tax benefited marriage? Maybe get anons to write to their congressmen for starters?

>Because the majority of people are retarded.

This is what liberals really believe.

People are not required by law to alter their age-old sacred social and religious customs just because you want them to.

You have no more right to tell Christians "Let me marry a dude in your church and have it honored by all institutions and organizations than a Christian has to come up to you and tell you "Stop being gay".

I'm allowed to disapprove of things just like you are, and I'm allowed to oppose changes I see as negative just like you are.
I view the normalization of homosexuality as an attempt to increase acceptance of sexual deviancy, and I'm going to act on that view just like you act on your beliefs.

Quit your whining, shut the fuck up and learn your place. You have an inflated sense of self-importance if you honestly believe everyone's obliged to change their institutions just because you want them to.

Who's the blind guy with a wig in OP's picture?

>The possibility of people wanting to marry dogs or any other animals after the passing of gay marriage legislation is nonsense and conservatives all know that.
No it fucking isn't, you idiots. These people ALREADY fucking exist, and if you set a shit precedent they're going to apply the the case they present. Stop ignoring reality so that you don't look worse by association.

>>357251
>Uses a troll-post as a source that something exists

>>357251

I'm sure supporters of homosexuals will tell you that you have no proof that homosexuality had anything to do with the sick fuck in your photo, but that is how it always happens. The goal posts of what sort of sick debauched faggotry that is permitted keeps getting moved. At some point, you just have to take a stand and say no more.

I will allow gay marriage on one condition. I want it to be legal for me to have multiple wives. If polygamy is legalized, I will support gay marriage. Until then, shut the fuck up.

>>357222
It's either your old, outdated belief system, or equal rights for others. HMMMMMMM. Maybe it's you who needs to shut up and accept that society changes and you're just a part of a slowly crumbling wall that people like me are trying to knock over faster.

>>357251
so, you DO support the criminalization of any sex other than the missionary position, right?

if man-on-man sex is the gateway to sex with animals, then certainly, anal or oral sex with a woman, which serves no natural purpose, is the gateway to man-on-man sex.
if you believe that any sex other than missionary style between a man and a woman who are married should be a crime, then i can respect your belief in a ban on gay marriage. at least you would be consistent in your delusions.

>>357264
The many referendums that have smacked down your "progressive change" say otherwise you cockhouse faggot.

Enjoy pushing a social agenda that nobody except for the mongs on huffingtonpost want or care about.

>>357264
I will go with the system that set up the rules in the first place aka NO FAGS ALLOWED!

There are only two possible genders.

Marriage is what you call the union of one gender and the other gender. In terms of magnets, it would be + and -, a magnetic attraction.

Trying to alter the tradition of marriage would be like coming along and saying that from now on + and + constitutes a magnetic attraction.

>>357274
people are not magnets.
fail.

>>357274
Uh oh, don't use logic. They will go apeshit.

>>357278
Homosexers aren't people.

BECAUSE FAGGOTS ARE ILL

>>357284
It's not logical because he's talking like humans are preprogrammed or some shit. It's not impossible for two men or two women to love each other. That's all that matters.

>>356910
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Anybody who opposes full equal rights for any adult human regardless of gender or orientation to marry an other adult human is an idiotic bigot, There is not a single valid argument for prejudice towards these people.

>>356913
http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html

A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other

Unlike most libertarians, I don't have an opinion on gay marriage, and I'm not going to have an opinion no matter how much you bait me. However, I had an interesting discussion last night with another libertarian about it, which devolved into an argument about a certain kind of liberal/libertarian argument about gay marriage that I find really unconvincing.

Social conservatives of a more moderate stripe are essentially saying that marriage is an ancient institution, which has been carefully selected for throughout human history. It is a bedrock of our society; if it is destroyed, we will all be much worse off. (See what happened to the inner cities between 1960 and 1990 if you do not believe this.) For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an important feature of the institution. We should not go mucking around and changing this extremely important institution, because if we make a bad change, the institution will fall apart.

A very common response to this is essentially to mock this as ridiculous. "Why on earth would it make any difference to me whether gay people are getting married? Why would that change my behavior as a heterosexual"

>>357315
To which social conservatives reply that institutions have a number of complex ways in which they fulfill their roles, and one of the very important ways in which the institution of marriage perpetuates itself is by creating a romantic vision of oneself in marriage that is intrinsically tied into expressing one's masculinity or femininity in relation to a person of the opposite sex; stepping into an explicitly gendered role. This may not be true of every single marriage, and indeed undoubtedly it is untrue in some cases. But it is true of the culture-wide institution. By changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage we might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.

To which, again, the other side replies "That's ridiculous! I would never change my willingness to get married based on whether or not gay people were getting married!"

Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. "That's ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!" This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case. The marginal case may be some consultant who just can't justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he's only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity. Similarly, you--highly educated, firmly socialised, upper middle class you--may not be the marginal marriage candidate; it may be some high school dropout in Tuscaloosa. That doesn't mean that the institution of marriage won't be weakened in America just the same.

>>357321
This should not be taken as an endorsement of the idea that gay marriage will weaken the current institution. I can tell a plausible story where it does; I can tell a plausible story where it doesn't. I have no idea which one is true. That is why I have no opinion on gay marriage, and am not planning to develop one. Marriage is a big institution; too big for me to feel I have a successful handle on it.

However, I am bothered by this specific argument, which I have heard over and over from the people I know who favor gay marriage laws. I mean, literally over and over; when they get into arguments, they just repeat it, again and again. "I will get married even if marriage is expanded to include gay people; I cannot imagine anyone up and deciding not to get married because gay people are getting married; therefore, the whole idea is ridiculous and bigoted."

They may well be right. Nonetheless, libertarians should know better. The limits of your imagination are not the limits of reality. Every government programme that libertarians have argued against has been defended at its inception with exactly this argument.

Let me take three major legal innovations, one of them general, two specific to marriage.

The first, the general one, is well known to most hard-core libertarians, but let me reprise it anyway. When the income tax was initially being debated, there was a suggestion to put in a mandatory cap; I believe the level was 10 percent.

>>357325
Don't be ridiculous, the Senator's colleagues told him. Americans would never allow an income tax rate as high as ten percent. They would revolt! It is an outrage to even suggest it!

Many actually fought the cap on the grounds that it would encourage taxes to grow too high, towards the cap. The American people, they asserted, could be well counted on to keep income taxes in the range of a few percentage points.

Oops.

Now, I'm not a tax-crazy libertarian; I don't expect you to be horrified that we have income taxes higher than ten percent, as I'm not. But the point is that the Senators were completely right--at that time. However, the existance of the income tax allowed for a slow creep that eroded the American resistance to income taxation. External changes--from the Great Depression, to the technical ability to manage withholding rather than lump payments, also facilitated the rise, but they could not have without a cultural sea change in feelings about taxation. That "ridiculous" cap would have done a much, much better job holding down tax rates than the culture these Senators erroneously relied upon. Changing the law can, and does, change the culture of the thing regulated.

>>357326
Another example is welfare. To sketch a brief history of welfare, it emerged in the nineteenth century as "Widows and orphans pensions", which were paid by the state to destitute families whose breadwinner had passed away. They were often not available to blacks; they were never available to unwed mothers. Though public services expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, that mentality was very much the same: public services were about supporting unfortunate families, not unwed mothers. Unwed mothers could not, in most cases, obtain welfare; they were not allowed in public housing (which was supposed to be--and was--a way station for young, struggling families on the way to homeownership, not a permanent abode); they were otherwise discriminated against by social services. The help you could expect from society was a home for wayward girls, in which you would give birth and then put the baby up for adoption.

The description of public housing in the fifties is shocking to anyone who's spent any time in modern public housing. Big item on the agenda at the tenant's meeting: housewives, don't shake your dustcloths out of the windows--other wives don't want your dirt in their apartment! Men, if you wear heavy work boots, please don't walk on the lawns until you can change into lighter shoes, as it damages the grass! (Descriptions taken from the invaluable book, The Inheritance, about the transition of the white working class from Democrat to Republican.) Needless to say, if those same housing projects could today find a majority of tenants who reliably dusted, or worked, they would be thrilled.

Public housing was, in short, a place full of functioning families.

>>357327
Now, in the late fifties, a debate began over whether to extend benefits to the unmarried. It was unfair to stigmatise unwed mothers. Why shouldn't they be able to avail themselves of the benefits available to other citizens? The brutal societal prejudice against illegitimacy was old fashioned, bigoted, irrational.

But if you give unmarried mothers money, said the critics, you will get more unmarried mothers.

Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?

People do all sorts of idiotic things, said the critics. If you pay for something, you usually get more of it.

C'mon said the activists. That's just silly. I just can't imagine anyone deciding to get pregnant out of wedlock simply because there are welfare benefits available.

Oooops.

>>357333
Of course, change didn't happen overnight. But the marginal cases did have children out of wedlock, which made it more acceptable for the next marginal case to do so. Meanwhile, women who wanted to get married essentially found themselves in competition for young men with women who were willing to have sex, and bear children, without forcing the men to take any responsibility. This is a pretty attractive proposition for most young men. So despite the fact that the sixties brought us the biggest advance in birth control ever, illegitimacy exploded. In the early 1960s, a black illegitimacy rate of roughly 25 percent caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to write a tract warning of a crisis in "the negro family" (a tract for which he was eviscerated by many of those selfsame activists.)

By 1990, that rate was over 70 percent. This, despite the fact that the inner city, where the illegitimacy problem was biggest, only accounts for a fraction of the black population.

But in that inner city, marriage had been destroyed. It had literally ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Possibly one of the most moving moments in Jason de Parle's absolutely wonderful book, American Dream, which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding.

>>357334
Marriage matters. It is better for the kids; it is better for the adults raising those kids; and it is better for the childless people in the communities where those kids and adults live. Marriage reduces poverty, improves kids outcomes in all measurable ways, makes men live longer and both spouses happier. Marriage, it turns out, is an incredibly important institution. It also turns out to be a lot more fragile than we thought back then. It looked, to those extremely smart and well-meaning welfare reformers, practically unshakeable; the idea that it could be undone by something as simple as enabling women to have children without husbands, seemed ludicrous. Its cultural underpinnings were far too firm. Why would a woman choose such a hard road? It seemed self-evident that the only unwed mothers claiming benefits would be the ones pushed there by terrible circumstance.

This argument is compelling and logical. I would never become an unwed welfare mother, even if benefits were a great deal higher than they are now. It seems crazy to even suggest that one would bear a child out of wedlock for $567 a month. Indeed, to this day, I find the reformist side much more persuasive than the conservative side, except for one thing, which is that the conservatives turned out to be right. In fact, they turned out to be even more right than they suspected; they were predicting upticks in illegitimacy that were much more modest than what actually occurred--they expected marriage rates to suffer, not collapse.

>>357335
How did people go so badly wrong? Well, to start with, they fell into the basic fallacy that economists are so well acquainted with: they thought about themselves instead of the marginal case. For another, they completely failed to realise that each additional illegitimate birth would, in effect, slightly destigmatise the next one. They assigned men very little agency, failing to predict that women willing to forgo marriage would essentially become unwelcome competition for women who weren't, and that as the numbers changed, that competition might push the marriage market towards unwelcome outcomes. They failed to forsee the confounding effect that the birth control pill would have on sexual mores.

But I think the core problems are two. The first is that they looked only at individuals, and took instititutions as a given. That is, they looked at all the cultural pressure to marry, and assumed that that would be a countervailing force powerful enough to overcome the new financial incentives for out-of-wedlock births. They failed to see the institution as dynamic. It wasn't a simple matter of two forces: cultural pressure to marry, financial freedom not to, arrayed against eachother; those forces had a complex interplay, and when you changed one, you changed the other.

>>357339
The second is that they didn't assign any cultural reason for, or value to, the stigma on illegitimacy. They saw it as an outmoded vestige of a repressive Victorial values system, based on an unnatural fear of sexuality. But the stigma attached to unwed motherhood has quite logical, and important, foundations: having a child without a husband is bad for children, and bad for mothers, and thus bad for the rest of us. So our culture made it very costly for the mother to do. Lower the cost, and you raise the incidence. As an economist would say, incentives matter.

(Now, I am not arguing in favor of stigmatising unwed mothers the way the Victorians did. I'm just pointing out that the stigma did not exist merely, as many mid-century reformers seem to have believed, because of some dark Freudian excesses on the part of our ancestors.)

But all the reformers saw was the terrible pain--and it was terrible--inflicted on unwed mothers. They saw the terrible unfairness--and it was terribly unfair--of punishing the mother, and not the father. They saw the inherent injustice--and need I add, it was indeed unjust--of treating American citizens differently because of their marital status.

>>357340
But as G.K. Chesterton points out, people who don't see the use of a social institution are the last people who should be allowed to reform it:

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Gay marriage is really the least important issue in America today. I'm all for it, but it's just not that big of a deal.

Gay marriage has no effect on:
- national security
- foreign policy
- environment
- financial reform
- education
- illegal immigration
- the looming energy crisis

It doesn't fucking change anything other than the ability of gays to say, "look we got married and share our finances now!"

It's ridiculous that people spend so much time debating gay marriage when there are more important matters at hand.

>>357346
"This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion."

>>356910
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>>357350
Now, of course, this can turn into a sort of precautionary principle that prevents reform from ever happening. That would be bad; all sorts of things need changing all the time, because society and our environment change. But as a matter of principle, it is probably a bad idea to let someone go mucking around with social arrangements, such as the way we treat unwed parenthood, if their idea about that institution is that "it just growed". You don't have to be a rock-ribbed conservative to recognise that there is something of an evolutionary process in society: institutional features are not necessarily the best possible arrangement, but they have been selected for a certain amount of fitness.

It might also be, of course, that the feature is what evolutionary biologists call a spandrel. It's a term taken from architecture; spandrels are the pretty little spaces between vaulted arches. They are not designed for; they are a useless, but pretty, side effect of the physical properties of arches. In evolutionary biology, spandrel is some feature which is not selected for, but appears as a byproduct of other traits that are selected for. Belly buttons are a neat place to put piercings, but they're not there because of that; they're a byproduct of mammalian reproduction.

However, and architect will be happy to tell you that if you try to rip out the spandrel, you might easily bring down the building.

The third example I'll give is of changes to the marriage laws, specifically the radical relaxation of divorce statutes during the twentieth century.

>>357353
Divorce, in the nineteenth century, was unbelievably hard to get. It took years, was expensive, and required proving that your spouse had abandonned you for an extended period with no financial support; was (if male) not merely discreetly dallying but flagrantly carrying on; or was not just belting you one now and again when you got mouthy, but routinely pummeling you within an inch of your life. After you got divorced, you were a pariah in all but the largest cities. If you were a desperately wronged woman you might change your name, taking your maiden name as your first name and continuing to use your husband's last name to indicate that you expected to continue living as if you were married (i.e. chastely) and expect to have some limited intercourse with your neighbours, though of course you would not be invited to events held in a church, or evening affairs. Financially secure women generally (I am not making this up) moved to Europe; Edith Wharton, who moved to Paris when she got divorced, wrote moving stories about the way divorced women were shunned at home. Men, meanwhile (who were usually the respondants) could expect to see more than half their assets and income settled on their spouse and children.

There were, critics observed, a number of unhappy marriages in which people stuck together. Young people, who shouldn't have gotten married; older people, whose spouses were not physically abusive nor absent, nor flagrantly adulterous, but whose spouse was, for reasons of financial irresponsibility, mental viciousness, or some other major flaw, destroying their life. Why not make divorce easier to get? Rather than requiring people to show that there was an unforgiveable, physically visible, cause that the marriage should be dissolved, why not let people who wanted to get divorced agree to do so?

>>357356
Because if you make divorce easier, said the critics, you will get much more of it, and divorce is bad for society.

That's ridiculous! said the reformers. (Can we sing it all together now?) People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!

Oops. When the law changed, the institution changed. The marginal divorce made the next one easier. Again, the magnitude of the change swamped the dire predictions of the anti-reformist wing; no one could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, a day when half of all marriages ended in divorce.

There were actually two big changes; the first, when divorce laws were amended in most states to make it easier to get a divorce; and the second, when "no fault" divorce allowed one spouse to unilaterally end the marriage. The second change produced another huge surge in the divorce rate, and a nice decline in the incomes of divorced women; it seems advocates had failed to anticipate that removing the leverage of the financially weaker party to hold out for a good settlement would result in men keeping more of their earnings to themselves.

What's more, easy divorce didn't only change the divorce rate; it made drastic changes to the institution of marriage itself. David Brooks makes an argument I find convincing: that the proliferation of the kind of extravagent weddings that used to only be the province of high society (rented venue, extravagent flowers and food, hundreds of guests, a band with dancing, dresses that cost the same as a good used car) is because the event itself doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to, so we have to turn it into a three-ring circus to feel like we're really doing something.

>>357357
A couple in 1940 (and even more so in 1910) could go to a minister's parlor, or a justice of the peace, and in five minutes totally change their lives. Unless you are a member of certain highly religious subcultures, this is simply no longer true. That is, of course, partly because of the sexual revolution and the emancipation of women; but it is also because you aren't really making a lifetime committment; you're making a lifetime committment unless you find something better to do. There is no way, psychologically, to make the latter as big an event as the former, and when you lost that committment, you lose, on the margin, some willingness to make the marriage work. Again, this doesn't mean I think divorce law should be toughened up; only that changes in law that affect marriage affect the cultural institution, not just the legal practice.

Three laws. Three well-meaning reformers who were genuinely, sincerely incapable of imagining that their changes would wreak such institutional havoc. Three sets of utterly logical and convincing, and wrong arguments about how people would behave after a major change.

So what does this mean? That we shouldn't enact gay marriage because of some sort of social Precautionary Principle

No. I have no such grand advice.

>>357070
>http://community.statesboroherald.com/blogs/detail/7610/
>ohu.jpg

>>357362
My only request is that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes. The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can't imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff. And second, the unwavering belief that the only reason that marriage, always and everywhere, is a male-female institution (I exclude rare ritual behaviors), is just some sort of bizarre historical coincidence, and that you know better, needs examining. If you think you know why marriage is male-female, and why that's either outdated because of all the ways in which reproduction has lately changed, or was a bad reason to start with, then you are in a good place to advocate reform. If you think that marriage is just that way because our ancestors were all a bunch of repressed bastards with dark Freudian complexes that made them homophobic bigots, I'm a little leery of letting you muck around with it.

>>357366
Is this post going to convince anyone? I doubt it; everyone but me seems to already know all the answers, so why listen to such a hedging, doubting bore? I myself am trying to draw a very fine line between being humble about making big changes to big social institutions, and telling people (which I am not trying to do) that they can't make those changes because other people have been wrong in the past. In the end, our judgement is all we have; everyone will have to rely on their judgement of whether gay marriage is, on net, a good or a bad idea. All I'm asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations to make that decision. I realise that this probably falls on the side of supporting the anti-gay-marriage forces, and I'm sorry, but I can't help that. This humility is what I want from liberals when approaching market changes; now I'm asking it from my side too, in approaching social ones. I think the approach is consistent, if not exactly popular.

Update A number of libertarians are, as I predicted, making the "Why don't we just privatise marriage?" argument. I don't find that useful in the context of the debate about gay marriage in America, where marriage is simply not going to be privatised in any foreseeable near-term future. I wrote an immediate follow up saying just that, but of course, I got a lot of readers from an Instalanche, which I didn't expect (no one expects an Instalanche!), and they just read the one post. So the second post is here; if you are thinking of making the argument that we should just get the state out of the marriage business, please read it.

>>357367
Also, a lot of readers are saying that I'm wrong about marriage always being between a man and a woman, citing polygamy. I have been told this is a "basic factual error."

No, it's not. Polygamous societies do not (at least in any society I have ever heard about) have group marriages. Men with more than one wife have multiple marriages with multiple women, not a single marriage with several wives. In fact, they generally take pains to separate the women, preferably in different houses. Whether or not you allow men to contract for more than one marriage (and for all sorts of reasons, this seems to me to be a bad idea unless you're in an era of permanent war), each marriage remains the union of a man and a woman.

Atheist republican here. Ever heard of prevailing state's rights? Yeah. Expounded upon here:

http://tech.mit.edu/V124/N5/kolasinski.5c.html

Essentially, gay marriage doesn't benefit the government's interests enough to justify legalizing it. Of course, the liberal's automatic response to this is: then why don't we disallow marriage of the elderly and the impotent?

And the response to that is that the fourth and fifth amendments protect you both from unlawful search and seizure (which mandatory fertility tests would fall under) and prevent you from incriminating yourself.

Religion is the auxiliary argument, but not the primary.

Fun question. If gays are born gay, why do they go out of their way to turn straight people gay? I believe the term is called "turn out". Seems that being gay is genetic when its useful to defend them. And also a good way to compare them to blacks but guess what fags a black person can't hide what they were born with, YOU CAN.

>>357274
people are not magnets.
magnets do not have sexual organs.
magnets are not living organisms.
magnets do not have rights.
fail.

>>357403
>If gays are born gay, why do they go out of their way to turn straight people gay?

So now we're just flat out making shit up, instead of making a reasoned argument? No wonder I hate this country. It's occupied by mouth-breathers like you.

>>357388
Are you being serious? We should support discrimination because 'it is not in the governments interests'? the state is there to protect our interests not the other way around and there is not a single valid reason to support unequal rights.

>>357415

Gay here. I can confirm this one. It's really just a lot more exciting to turn someone from straight to gay/bi, and gives your self-esteem a boost. Of course, you're not biologically changing anything. Just opening their mind and making them jaded sooner.

>>357403
If gays are born gay, are pedos born to be pedos? Why is pedophilia still considered a mental disorder and homosexuality isn't?

>>357424
If that's the case, you're not actually turning anyone into anything. If they open up to homosexuality, then they were always homosexual, but were denying it for some other reason. You didn't convert them; you opened them up to themselves. I don't subscribe to this bullshit theory that homosexuals are a cult that requires converts for their continued success. And I'm a straight man in a long-term relationship. There are no homosexual converts. There are closeted homos, and open homos.

>Gay marriage is not okay because fags can't have kids.

what

Fags love having kids almost as much as heterosexual people. Being gay is not synonymous with wanting to live your life without ever having children.

Wouldn't they actually make for a good method to pick up the slack for those heterosexual couples that can't manage their own children, leaving them to burden the state?

>>357423

You're living in America, idiot. You serve the government until you get the balls to have a revolution.

Remember, that between the government and its people is a mutually beneficial relationship. The government provides us with services because we make it easy for them. If you'd rather not make it easy for them, go find your own little socialist corner of the world and pay taxes out your ass. Enjoy the lingering stench of patchouli.

>>357440

You're in denial bro. The faggot just told you he likes to mind fuck people into trying out homosexual acts. Guess what? If a woman sucks your dick it feels good. If a guy sucks your dick it still feels good. Its a matter of whom you choose to let suck your dick.

>>356913
>I don't understand the conservative viewpoint on Gay Marriage at all. It seems to be the complete opposite of republican ideology. Conservatism is supposed to be all about small government and little to no government influence on the way a person chooses to life their life. For example; preference for a free market economy, light gun control, low tax rates etc. However, gay marriage is the only area in which conservatives want regulation on how a person is allowed to live their life, in their own home.

You simply do not understand what marriage is. Marriage is NOT a freedom, it is a mixed institution which is part private contract and part government illiberal privilege (tax rights, inheritance rights, hospital visitation rights etc.).

Allowing gay marriage is NOT opposing "regulation on how a person is allowed to live their life, in their own home.". Gay people do not need marriage in order to live their life in their own home in any way they wish. Indeed the only point of gay marriage is to allow privileges for gay married people that other people living together such as brother and sister, elderly spinsters, flatmates etc. do not have - for example two elderly spinsters living together for decades who die pay more inheritance tax than two married lesbians.

Therefore a "small government" conservative should not support gay marriage, they should support the abolition of all marriage, in the sense that all marriage should be a private contract and the government should completely butt out, including whether they want to support gay, polyamorous, zoophile, transgender or whatever special forms of it.

>BLACK AND WHITE BLACK AND WHITE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GRAY

Sure thing buddy.

>>357441

there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe’s Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials?

>>357466
>woops

meant to quote >>357440

>>357449
>If a woman sucks your dick it feels good. If a guy sucks your dick it still feels good.
>If a guy sucks your dick it still feels good.
>guy sucks your dick it still feels good.

You just said more about yourself in that one sentence than most people say in their whole lives. That argument doesn't make you correct. It just makes you bisexual. That's it.