What’s Wrong with the World

Well, I'm just thanking the good Lord that Wal*Mart isn't on the list. That would cause a rift in the conservative space/time continuum.

I could boycott Starbucks pretty easily. Their coffee is over-priced anyway. Getting away from Google is doable but would require a lot out of me as I use multiple Google services. Getting away from Microsoft would be very difficult as I'd have to go with Apple or perhaps Linux.

I am curious about boycott lists. I've never joined a boycott but I think that I should. Here's one that publishes a list of companies that are pro-choice:

http://www.fightpp.org/

I don't suppose, NM, that you count that to WalMart's _credit_ or anything? Nah, that would be too much to ask. I find it funny that you find an opportunity to make a snide remark about WalMart and conservatives when WM isn't on the list. That begins to sound like an obsession.

Is it boycotts you are proposing, Jeff? I always like to see concrete proposals together with highly general comments about "corporate America" and whose "side" this vast entity is on.

I mean, let's put it this way: If eliminating the LLC or some such politico-legal proposal is supposed to flow from this rogue's list of liberal business operators, I ain't buying it. If round condemnation of Google for being a nest of social liberal vipers is the proposal, I'm on board. Consider Google roundly condemned by me for a nest of social liberal vipers.

Thank you, Jeff, for calling water wet. I'm more surprised that there aren't more on the list. I think you and Ron and other boycotters are missing the point. Corporations are followers of social trends. You have to deal with the cause and everything, including corporations, will follow. You think boycotting Google is going to stop any of this when the other side is more powerful at pushing them the other way? You're just complaining about the symptom not the cause.

For the record, I'm not calling for a boycott. Just a public service announcement to remind some of my friends who's not on their side. Because they need reminding.

I'm more surprised that there aren't more on the list.

Same here. They probably weren't asked, or didn't have the time, or didn't want to stick their necks out quite so far. But I'll eat my hat if 90% of Fortune 500 companies aren't more or less on the wrong side of this issue.

Corporations are followers of social trends.

Sure, when social trends give them some market advantage. The problem is that corporations follow the trends of the elite while imposing the same trends on the masses. That's a problem, isn't it?

You're just complaining about the symptom not the cause.

Not at all. There are many causes. One of them is an economy and a population dominated by the influence of gigantic, amoral corporations; another is an economic philosophy that justifies this arrangement.

I think the problem is that you frame this as a false dichotomy; opposing the Defense of Marriage Act is "attacking the family." It is possible for a person to believe, "While I personally am not in favor of same-sex marriage, it is not my place to try to use the force of law to prevent other people from entering into same-sex marriages."

Conservatives on this issue keep pretending that if they believe something is morally wrong, they must therefore try to ban it legally. Instead of making a clear distinction between that which is legally permitted and that which is morally permitted, conservatives keep pretending that the two should be one and the same.

This will backfire. By conflating the legal issue with the cultural issue, you're going to lose both battles. Decades from now, there will still be people who feel that same-sex marriage is immoral. They will likely be embarrassed to express that view publicly, and they'll look back on this era in American history and think, "If we had only adopted a policy of 'live and let live,' we wouldn't have rhetorically painted ourselves into a corner."

Conservatives on this issue keep pretending that if they believe something is morally wrong, they must therefore try to ban it legally. Instead of making a clear distinction between that which is legally permitted and that which is morally permitted, conservatives keep pretending that the two should be one and the same.

Since most Americans enthusiastically support tying a number of privileges, rights and legal obligations to marriage, gay marriage is not exactly neutral in its implications for issues ranging from adoption to employers' rights. There is a very pragmatic basis for attacking gay marriage.

"I find it funny that you find an opportunity to make a snide remark about WalMart and conservatives when WM isn't on the list. That begins to sound like an obsession."

Not really. It's just that the love affair between contemporary conservatism and Wal*Mart is such an easy target, being so indicative of the mainstream right's huge blindspot w/r/t this issue.

"There are many causes. One of them is an economy and a population dominated by the influence of gigantic, amoral corporations; another is an economic philosophy that justifies this arrangement."

Hear, hear! Which of course doesn't let the sexual revolution and the abuses of the welfare state off the hook. Lasch tried to get his fellow liberals to see this 20 yrs ago or more. Not much success, unfortunately. The Right still has time to wake up, but it's not looking good.

The Right still has time to wake up, but it's not looking good.

I gotta say, I find this patronizing. I can't recall ever, in my entire life, saying anything that remotely implies that the people who run corporations are advocates of motherhood, apple pie, and pro-life causes. I know perfectly well that lots of them aren't. A few are, but the majority were presumably raised and mentored among the liberal elites, and that's how they've turned out. There's something very strange about the implication that somehow one has to support...well, you know, I'm not sure _what_ we're supposed to support to show that we've "awakened" to this sociological fact. Usually statements about the right "waking up" or "needing to be informed that corporate America isn't on their side" come without recommendations. I would _guess_ we're supposed to support some kind of general legal or political change vis a vis corporations--I suggested above the elimination of the LLC. Perhaps some sort of change in tax status? More graduated income taxes? Honestly, I don't know. But what I do know is that showing the social liberalism of a lot of people who run corporations really isn't going to support these policy suggestions. What? Hey, let's tax large corporations more heavily because a lot of large corporations are run by liberals? Let's eliminate the legal protections regarding lawsuits, etc., for every individual who runs a business that is currently an LLC because Google opposes DOMA? So if it's supposed to, I'm not buying.

Of course, Jeff didn't say any of that.

It's just that I don't know exactly what we're supposed to do about this.

I haven't been under any illusion about the majority of people in that part of society at any point in my life that I can recall. So, thanks for the specific announcement and list. It's interesting information in a general way. But, especially if there's no boycott call (which would be pretty hard to carry out anyway), it has no relevance for any change in my ideas or attitudes or actions at all.

Oh, and my conservative friends _repeatedly_ post on Facebook and elsewhere reports about various corporate and business actions that are contrary to social conservatism. When Apple banned the Manhattan Statement app., it was all over the conservative Web. Some actually do boycott Google search and use goodsearch instead (I think it's called). IIRC, anti-jihad web sites have put up wry posts about Google's refusal to celebrate various American patriotic holidays. And so on and so forth.

So I also don't know who these conservatives are who think that the majority of corporate execs are with them on social and other issues and who therefore need to be awakened. Maybe I just need to get out more.

Anyone working at an American company is in the belly of a beast. We all have our front in the war--I'm totally surrounded--and doing something about all the Christ-haters at Google and Microsoft is just beyond me.

Phil,

Uh, have you ever visited this blog before? Were you trying to convince anyone here with something resembling an argument? You have it all wrong anyway -- the one's trying to force their view on the majority of Ameircans are the homosexual lobby -- as Mike T points out there are all sorts of profound implications for forcing society to change its public meaning of marriage.

Jeff C.,

This caught my eye: "The problem is that corporations follow the trends of the elite while imposing the same trends on the masses. That's a problem, isn't it?"

I read this a lot from the paleos but I can't figure out what the heck you mean? No one forces anyone else in America to buy a certain product or watch a certain TV show or listen to a certain radio station, etc. -- so how is a corporation imposing anything on anyone?

I suppose as far as "imposing," Jeff S., I might include all the advertising, some of it _highly_ inappropriate, that pops up in one's face just when using the Internet. That's why I recommend Adblocker and Adblock Plus. I can't praise those kinds of programs enough. There really is an "in your face" feeling to that kind of thing. Overall, though, as far as products and the like, probably "promoting" would be a better word than "imposing."

But when they start getting directly involved in politics and law, then what you said to Phil comes into play. The amicus brief that is the subject of the main post really _is_ an indirect attempt to "impose" something, because the idea is to rescind DOMA and then force the view of the homosexual lobby on the American people. So those corporations through that amicus brief really are working very eagerly with a group trying to impose something on the masses.

The question, of course, is what to do about that. These corporations wouldn't be doing these things if they weren't run by real people who are social liberals. Tom Monaghan also owned a large company, and he did something far different with his money!

I've really never understood how we're supposed to move from, "George Soros is a liberal wacko using his money and influence for bad purposes" to "Therefore, down with corporations" (whatever the latter means, anyway, in concrete terms).

One might as well say that a lot of people who live in big houses, drive big cars, and have big bank accounts are liberals (which would also be true), so therefore we should confiscate all the big houses, cars, and bank accounts to lessen the influence of liberals.

There are, shall we say, a few argumentative steps to be filled in here to make a persuasive case for any policy action at all, which is perhaps why none is suggested. But in that case, what exactly is supposed to be the evidence for the ignorance, naivete, and need to be reminded on the part of people like Jeff Singer and me?

Large-scale capitalism precludes conservatism, because discriminatory barriers get in the way of profits. Making a profit isn't an inherently bad thing, but in America today it is very nearly the only thing.

That's well said, Lydia. I'd add emphasis on the corporations' assault upon the innocence of children in their advertising. One of my girls is a big baseball fan, loves to just read boxscores and the so forth; but she can't watch the World Series without being subjected to endless sexual innuendo at every commercial break? Really? Thanks for that, libertarians.

Libertarians who tell us it's all the responsibility of the parents would surely guffaw out loud if they heard of families that forbid the children from watching the World Series. (Our family is of course a huge fan of DVR, which the industry rather dislikes precisely because we can zoom through the ads.)

All this is a damnable imposition, Jeff Singer. The pedantry that maintains that some perfect liberty to protect children from pop culture is available to all parents is really quite tiresome. More broadly this idea that tyranny is exclusively the province of public as against private corporations seems shortsighted to me.

Lydia, what I'd say about Soros is that much of his business is usury. That he shows up in the pages of the Financial Times now and then when convenient to denounce usury does not change anything. What he does with any justly earned fortune one thing; I generally take the view that the Constitution protects most of that activity.

What I'm more suspicious about is how he earned it, whether it was justly earned. Our predicament in this country derives in part from the conquest of free enterprise by usurers, of whom foremost may be that Hungarian hedge fund magnate.

Lydia, what I'd say about Soros is that much of his business is usury.

Whether true or not, that's pretty much separate from the fact that he's a social liberal viper. I mean, it could go either way: He could be a social liberal viper running a business producing a real, high-quality good or service, or he could be a social conservative running what you would consider a "usurious" business.

What bothers me is the weird idea that we libertarian-minded need to be informed that "corporate America is not on our side" with a grocery list of rich liberal vipers as though this is supposed to inspire us to smack our foreheads and support something-or-other we previously opposed. What is that something??? And how does this revelation (which we already knew) about the liberals inhabiting the corner office support that something?

As for child-inappropriate world series ads, I'm all in favor of anything that helps you avoid them, and in a better world, we'd still have a board of censorship for regular television operating on 1950's standards.

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that Jeff Singer might agree with that last statement as well, though I could be proved wrong.

Lydia and Jeff S., I think you have to look at the "imposition" thing in light of what Jeff C. wrote in his other comment concerning "an economy and a population dominated by the influence of gigantic, amoral corporations" and the "economic philosophy that justifies this arrangement."

Corporations which hold a fair amount of power can impose by default, so to speak. If you listen to recorded music, the odds are that you're hearing something produced by one of four or five giant multimedia companies. Ditto with TV and movies. Ditto with food, etc. Under the guise of "more choices" our real ability to choose is slowly being funneled, as it were, to ever fewer providers. There is a sort of "market compulsion," which relies a lot on the advertising dollar, to steer the consumer towards consolidated producers (try, for instance, to prepare a meal or two without using something from ConAgra.) As economist Albino Barrera describes this funneling, it tends to lead consumers to choose between limited, sometimes equally undesirable, alternatives, and thus can be seen not as coercive (no one's holding a gun to your head to buy a certain brand) but compulsive, in that by alleged "market forces" one is compelled to buy certain brands, if one wants the product at all.

Now if corporations do this with their products, they also do it the world-view(s) they use to promote the products. Sex sells, so they use it. Appeals to narcissism and self-centeredness, ditto. Hence the gigantic, amoral corporations Jeff mentions wield a large amount of cultural power in addition to their financial power. Do you really think Lady Gaga became famous by accident?

I don't think they were being exactly amoral in submitting that amicus brief. Unfortunately. Maybe if they stayed amoral we'd have less trouble with them. Let's face it: That reflects an actual worldview about what is and isn't moral. The wrong one.

I'm not super-bothered about whether I have huge numbers of food providers to choose from. Unlike some people, I don't consider that every eating choice is fraught with gigantic ethical moment. ("Was this grown organically using only workers being paid union scale on American soil?" "Did this cow have a happy life for every moment?" "What about the chickens who provided the eggs?" "Do this company's food-growing practices contribute to global warming?" "Is this company exploiting me by selling me a product high in fat and containing preservatives?" "Were the ingredients for this grown far away, so that I can't say I'm eating local if I eat their food?") Food is food. I make my own decisions about what is good for me and my family and a good value for the money, and that's about it. Our country does have trust-busting laws in place, and _if_ monopolies are a problem, those are meant to address that problem. Short of that, if it's hard to buy a week's worth of food without buying, directly or indirectly, from ConAgra, this does not per se make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The food alternatives in place are only going to seem, I'm guessing, "equally undesirable" to people who have priorities I simply don't share.

Some products have more intrinsic "ethical content" than others. The difficulty buying modest clothes, for example, is an issue that I can imagine someone's relating to having lots of clothes made by relatively fewer clothing manufacturers. On the other hand, three cheers for the free market, because if you look hard and are motivated, you can still find modest clothes.

I think, NM, that you're going to have more luck with criticizing corporate advertising as sleazy, sexual in nature, etc. And there I'm sure I'll agree with you. But I've already commented on that, showing that I don't carry a libertarian card in my wallet. The alleged "coerciveness" of having to buy from large producers of products I'm actually quite happy to buy just isn't something additional that's going to faze me.

Paul,

For the record, like Lydia, I fail the Cato Institute/Reason Magazine pure libertarian card-carrying membership test for a variety of reasons one of which has to do with censorship. I think you are quite right to think of advertising (I was thinking of content when I wrote my first post) as being imposed on consumers and something that in a sane world would be carefully monitored and restricted in content based on the time of day and the station/show content*. So you are quite right that impose is a good word in those contexts. In fact, while you mentioned baseball, one small sign of hope that decency still exists in our fair land has to do with the infamous half-time Superbowl show involving Janet Jackson. I think the outrage middle-Americans felt was entirely appropriate and thankfully influenced the producers of the half-time show to make sure future acts were more family friendly. Unfortunately, the folks who control the advertising during the Superbowl never got that memo.

Nice Marmot,

I don't buy your "impose by default" argument for one second. As Lydia said, either a corporation has monopoly power or it doesn't. As for Lady Gaga -- she became famous because she made catchy pop songs ("Poker Face" and "Just Dance" from her first album were world-wide hits for a reason) and developed an outrageous and interesting "pop star" personality that appealed to foolish kids.

*Speaking of advertising content -- I've been getting angry enough to start some sort of campaign against the content of the billboards along the Kennedy expressway which I take into work everyday (and use to bring the family downtown when traveling that way). Not only do I have to endure large billboards for strip clubs, but now there is a billboard celebrating "gay weddings" (although we only have "civil unions" in Illinois). Imagine driving with your daughter and having to explain that one!

Google is as gay a place as you could find, not too surprising given its location.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/tech/Google-to-Pay-More-for-Gay-Employees-97581254.html
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2082839/Gayglers-Visibly-Support-Google-in-Global-Pride-Parades

I suggest you boycott their free services immediately, that'll show 'em.

Jeff Singer writes:

Were you trying to convince anyone here with something resembling an argument?

It was more like an entirely accurate description of what is happening, plus an accurate prediction (most likely) of what will happen.

Social conservatives haven't left room for people who say, "Although I do not personally believe same-sex marriage is a good thing, I will not attempt to prevent other people from doing it if it is what they believe." That option hasn't been on the table, in a realistic way, any time in the past decade.

If you want to pretend that same-sex marriage isn't going to be legal in the United States within the next 20 years, you are welcome to pretend that. I'd be happy to exchange contact information with you so we can make a sizable bet about whether it will be the law of the land, but I'm confident my prediction is accurate, and there are plenty of conservative pundits who also think that legal outcome is likely.

As the legal tide turns, it's easy to envision that social conservatives, like many of the people who frequent this blog, will shift their message: "Even though same-sex marriage is legal, it is immoral, and therefore people ought not enter into same-sex marriages."

Had you taken that stance from the very beginning, it would have been a plausible position, socially and politically. Unfortunately, the right didn't choose that path. Instead, the right turned the debate into a referendum on their deeply held beliefs, saying to homosexuals, "Because of our beliefs, we do not support your right to live according to your own beliefs."

This forced homosexuals and their supporters to focus not just on attacking the existing law, but on attacking your beliefs. You can't blame them for this; you chose it, and you continue to choose it. You are saying, in effect, "It is not enough for you to change the law. You must also stamp out the beliefs that support the law."

And that's exactly what's happening. The viewpoint that homosexual relationships are morally wrong--which was a perfectly common viewpoint just a few a decades ago--is now marginalized and is, itself, viewed as an immoral belief.

I don't think that your right to denounce homosexuality will disappear. I think you'll be able to preach about sin and immorality until you're blue in the face. But the way that the culture responds to people who express that viewpoint about homosexuality has shifted, and will continue to shift.

If you're vocal about the immorality of homosexuality, businesses will choose not to associate with you. You'll be marginalized, and out of the mainstream. You might face boycotts. When that happens, you'll say, "Whoa! I have a right to my deeply held beliefs! I ought not be treated differently by society because of my beliefs!" In essence, you'll argue (or you'll wish you could argue) that people who fundamentally disagree with you ought to "live and let live."

Unfortunately, you will reap what you sow. By refusing to "live and let live" now, you're not leaving room for that to happen, to you, in the future.

You have it all wrong anyway -- the one's trying to force their view on the majority of Americans are the homosexual lobby -- as Mike T points out there are all sorts of profound implications for forcing society to change its public meaning of marriage.

I understand that you believe that perfectly ordinary Americans, by trying to get married, are forcing you to do something. I don't think you're lying; I think you really believe that. But I don't think playing the victim card is a good strategy when your opponents are legally prohibited from marrying. Forcing someone to remain single for the rest of their lives, contrary to their own beliefs, gives someone a pretty darn good claim on victimhood. You might not believe that, and ordinarily, I'd say your beliefs are your business, but that is clearly not the game you've chosen to play. So, good luck with that.

Forcing someone to remain single for the rest of their lives, contrary to their own beliefs, gives someone a pretty darn good claim on victimhood.

People in same-sex marriages are single. For the rest of their lives. They just don't know it.

"I'm not super-bothered about whether I have huge numbers of food providers to choose from."

Ironic, considering your tirade against centralization on the other thread. Apparently it is only state centralization that you deem problematic, alas. Nevermind that state and corporate centralization proceed hand-in-hand, as it were, as is readily apparent to anyone willing to look objectively at the thing.

"Food is food. I make my own decisions about what is good for me and my family and a good value for the money, and that's about it."

Spoken like a true low-church, non-sacramental Protestant (no offense intended -- just stating a fact.)

"As Lydia said, either a corporation has monopoly power or it doesn't."

Really? So one day a big corporation just wakes up and happens to find itself a monopoly? There's no "progress" towards it or intentionality involved? There's no continuum? Really?

"As for Lady Gaga -- she became famous because she made catchy pop songs...and developed an outrageous and interesting "pop star" personality that appealed to foolish kids."

If you really believe this you are hopelessly naive. But let's give this ridiculosity a half-second's consideration: if what you're saying is true, then the market not only created a vulgar, crude pop persona, but rewarded her with superstardom and wealth by virtue of her very vulgarity and crudity. Not exactly a great selling point for the "decisions" of the market, is it? The invisible hand has given us the shaft here, wouldn't you say?

Spoken like a true low-church, non-sacramental Protestant (no offense intended -- just stating a fact.)

I'm very low-church Protestant on many matters, but you might be surprised by my views about the Sacrament, though they are not, of course, the same as yours. I do think it's silly and, frankly, borderline sacrilegious to apply the concept of "sacramentality" to the New Kosher requirements of the Crunchies, environmentalists, locavores, etc., etc., regarding food that isn't a sacrament. For that, it would be more accurate for you to say, "Spoken like a rational Christian." Catholicism, unlike, say, Eastern Orthodoxy, has a long, strong, and proud tradition of Christian rationalism, in the best of senses, and the attempt to expand a fuzzy notion of "sacramentalism" to ordinary food and on that basis to impose a bunch of obsessive-compulsive worries about the source, preparation, and ingredients of the food is not Catholic but Pharisaical.

I'm feeling frank this morning.

"the attempt to expand a fuzzy notion of 'sacramentalism' to ordinary food and on that basis to impose a bunch of obsessive-compulsive worries about the source, preparation, and ingredients of the food is not Catholic but Pharisaical."

That statement and the "new Kosher" comment are not only a mischaracterization and exaggeration of concerns about food, but it demonstrates that you not only do not understand sacramentalism, you don't understand asceticism either.

"I'm feeling frank this morning."

Me too. I'm beginning to think that there is perhaps not enough philosophical and theological common ground here to have a meaningful conversation.

By the way, I'm largely taking my cues from any number of orthodox Catholic thinkers and writers, from St. Augustine to Josef Pieper to Walker Percy. Not exactly outliers, in other words.

Phil, your position is argumentatively completely wrong. My even writing this comment is undoubtedly a waste of time, and for that reason I hope to discipline myself to make it the last in response to your position, but for the record, here goes:

Nobody is stopping homosexuals from going through a personal ceremony which they call "getting married." The concept of legal homosexual "marriage" just is a concept of putting in place special public recognition of their unions. There's nothing else that can be meant by "allowing" people to "get married," and the term "allowing" is thus misleading.

Once such legally recognized unions are set in place, everyone who has anything to do with marriage--from the person who works in the public registrar's office who is forced to solemnized the marriage to all the people whose businesses concern weddings who must treat this as a wedding to the teacher at the adopted child's school who must on pain of firing refer to the two women or two men as "married" to the employer who must pay spousal benefits to the partner--will be legally required to acknowledge it.

Pro-homosexual activists usually begin with the "Who, little old me?" line and then, when one points this out, the mask slips and suddenly we're told, "Well, yes, that will then be the legal reality, so of course people will just have to acknowledge it. Deal with it."

Even without homosexual "marriage" legally recognized, it would be tedious to list all the coercive government acts that are already carried out, all the time, against individuals who refuse to treat homosexuality as normal. I'm sure you can find lists of these elsewhere. I refuse to run around the web compiling them, as I've done so many times before in my life. Here's just one example: In New Mexico, which doesn't even have homosexual "marriage," a photographer was fined under non-discrimination law for not using her photographic talents to celebrate a lesbian commitment ceremony. There are lots more where that came from.

The idea that the conservative position on these matters is the coercive one and the homosexual activist position is the libertarian one won't pass the one-second smell test.

What that means is that if an otherwise intelligent person like yourself seriously advocates that position in a combox, there is very likely not a thing that I or anyone else can say that will change your mind. But the truth is what it is, and I've at least sketched it in outline.

you don't understand asceticism either.

If you just decided to have a Lenten diet all the time to mortify the flesh, that would be asceticism. If you have a Lenten diet because of trendy worries about the environment, local food, the evils of Big Agri, etc., that is not asceticism but political correctness, and the attempt to combine it with real, traditional asceticism creates a theological and cultural monstrosity. If you want to eat like a monk, that's fine, but it is a lot less silly to do it for monkish reasons.

"that is not asceticism but political correctness, and the attempt to combine it with real, traditional asceticism creates a theological and cultural monstrosity."

No, it is simply an attempt to apply ascetical ideas to getting and spending. They should apply to all areas of life, not just eating.

I don't think that your right to denounce homosexuality will disappear. I think you'll be able to preach about sin and immorality until you're blue in the face. But the way that the culture responds to people who express that viewpoint about homosexuality has shifted, and will continue to shift.

Phil, while your statements prior to this are also objectionable, this one shows just how far off the deep end you are. Under the current trend-line, it WILL be literally illegal to denounce homosexuality in the foreseeable future, and it is ALREADY impossible to "live the way you want" if you are heterosexual. In Canada, which is usually around 5 to 10 years ahead of us, Christians have already been fined and imprisoned for simply quoting the Bible on homosexuality. There is no reasonable basis for thinking that won't happen here, everyone who thought that in Canada on the same types of arguments have already been proven wrong.

People in the US have already been banned from certain professions for failing to explicitly approve homosexual lifestyles. People in the US have already been prosecuted or fined for failing to rent to gay couples. Photographers in the US have been taken to court for refusing to shoot an event - like a "commitment ceremony" - for a gay couple, even though the state they lived in does not have gay marriage.

It is not merely being "marginalized" and "boycotted" to be thrown out of your profession by the state for failing to tell gays that you support their behavior. That's outright persecution.

Hypothetical scene: the Church of Hateyous practice "worship" by taking 6-pointed stars, yarmulke, and 7-candle candlabra and mashing them up, stamping on them, and worse behavior still using the same raw materials as Mapplethorpe used. Preferable is to do these actions to objects that had at one time belonged to Jews. Now, lots of Jews object to these actions, and don't like it when Hateyous do it, and especially when Hateyous publicize these actions, still more so when Hateyous rent public spaces to carry these out. In some places Jews have filed lawsuits to get these stopped. But the Hateyous are winning the advertising battle, and expect to not only get the courts to uphold their right to do these things, but to get laws passed that mandate Jews that sell any such items to sell them to Hateyous. Jews are being STUPID and WRONG to upset Hateyous by trying to prevent Hateyous from practicing their own beliefs, they should have just gone about thinking "live and let live". Those close-minded Jews who who caution about the likelihood of remaining in the "live" category down the road (in a disparaging reference to some ancient historical theory) will be fined or imprisoned for hate speech, they have no moral or legal right to attribute evil motives to the Hateyous as a class.

Sorry, Phil, but the immoral liberal left culture-terrorists have, for the last 50 years, shown us the real meaning of your so-called argument. It means that the idea that culture (and the laws) ought to protect and promote traditional morality are to be cast out, and the idea that culture and laws ought to protect and promote the new-fangled pretend-morality of "anything sexual is OK, and anything that tries to put a boundary on that is wrong" is to be force-fed to the youth in all education, entertainment, and media. This is cultural death to traditional morality, (which goes without saying), but is just as much an imposition as those who promote traditional morality are accused of "imposing" on the freak-minded left. If it is wrong from traditionals to impose it, then the anti-morality leftists are at least as guilty.

There's something very strange about the implication that somehow one has to support...well, you know, I'm not sure _what_ we're supposed to support to show that we've "awakened" to this sociological fact.

Maybe reconsider your preference for being ruled by gigantic, amoral corporations? (I say amoral because I think their "moral" positions are purely subservient to their primary values of profit and power.)

Part of the solution is to disincentivize giantism while incentivizing small business entrepreneurship - strategically, of course, because there are a few large enterprises that should remain large for the public good. But in general our economic policies should disfavor corporate giantism. There will be much less to be gained by cozying up to trendy elite opinion, and much less concentrated corporate influence.

In related news, Wal-Mart is now poised to become the largest provider of health care in America: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/wal-mart-aims-to-become-largest-provider-of-primary-healthcare-services/

I say amoral because I think their "moral" positions are purely subservient to their primary values of profit and power.

While I don't disagree with the point that many of these corporations are operated in a morality-free model, I don't think that this explains the behavior we are seeing. Well before the gay agenda had a sizeable market force in its favor, a number of corporations were solidly behind the movement. This cannot be because they thought it was better for their bottom line. They were promoting the gay lifestyle because of a decided approval for gays, or at least for anything but traditional morality. I am guessing that these early companies did it mainly because the leading individuals making these policies were wholly opposed to traditional morality, and were perfectly willing to piggy-back their hatred of that morality on any useful group to come along, and gays just happened to come along at the right time. These immoral individuals were perfectly willing to push for this even at the cost of a modest profit percentage, thinking that the destruction of the Christian hold on culture was well worth a bit of profit. It is only after some years of this behavior that other companies came on board, at least in part for reasons of strict profit.

I agree with Tony. These guys _are_ liberals. The idea that somehow the market is forcing them to be liberals is, shall we say, a case of unnecessary extra explanation.

Part of the solution is to disincentivize giantism while incentivizing small business entrepreneurship - strategically, of course

Jeff, if you have specific policy proposals to that effect, I'll consider them qua politico-economic policy proposals. Don't know how many I'll agree with or disagree with, but I suspect our disagreements would outnumber our agreements.

I just don't consider the fact that a lot of corporations happen to be run by committed liberals to be relevant to the question of some sort of tax or other policy proposals trying to make companies smaller.

Generally, I expect that most rich and/or powerful and/or influential people in America are going to be far more liberal than I am. Like the poor, the rich we have always with us. Some sort of enhanced trust-busting laws to force companies, by government action, to be (or appear to be) smaller is not, in my opinion, going to make America less liberal.

Some sort of enhanced trust-busting laws to force companies, by government action, to be (or appear to be) smaller is not, in my opinion, going to make America less liberal.

Not in the short run, Lydia, I agree. But what about longer term? If the typical sized business ceases to be 5000 and comes to be no more than about 80 to 100, that might have a significant long-term effect toward reversing the never-ending liberalization of the culture. Or maybe not, I don't really know. I tend to think that a business where the top bosses don't interact regularly and normally with the front-line personnel is a business where the top bosses find it easy to think of the bottom line instead of people, where they ought to think of both so as to ensure that the bottom line serves people. I suppose that isn't really a liberal-conservative dichotomy, it is more a human-inhuman dichotomy.

William Luse/Lydia/Tony,
I'm not attempting to attack your deeply held beliefs in this thread; I'm just pointing out that the way the right has insisted that beliefs (particular religious beliefs) and the law must go hand-in-hand has forced anyone who wants to work toward legal change to also attack your beliefs. It is an outcome that follows naturally.

I've pointed out, essentially, that you will not only lose the legal battle, but you will also lose the cultural battle. And you're responding by calling me "wrong," and then pointing out how you're losing both the legal and cultural battle. A photographer in New Mexico was sued for refusing to photograph a gay commitment ceremony? Gosh, why won't those damned liberals "live and let live?"

The problem, as I see it, is an inability (or a refusal) to separate the question of whether a belief is true from whether a belief is believed.

William Luse illustrates this:

People in same-sex marriages are single. For the rest of their lives. They just don't know it.

William Luse believes his statement, and it's reasonable to infer that a same-sex couple, seeking marriage, does not. William's mistake is that he's caught up in whether it is true that the individuals who make up a homosexual couple are "single." That's a mistake. William acts as though his right to believe that a same-sex couple is single and their right to believe that they're married are two separate rights. If William framed the issue differently, and contended that his right to believe what he wants is the same right as the homosexual couples' right to believe what they want, he'd be in a better position in the long run.

Unfortunately, that isn't what has happened, historically.

Lydia, I think you misunderstand me when you write:

The idea that the conservative position on these matters is the coercive one and the homosexual activist position is the libertarian one won't pass the one-second smell test.

I didn't say that the left's position wrt same-sex marriage is libertarian. Quite the contrary. My point is that conservatives have long insisted, and continue to insist, that it is a zero-sum game. Conservatives had the ball in their court, and they set the rules. Gay activists had no choice but to fight against your beliefs; they weren't given the option of fighting a libertarian battle. And since conservatives have always insisted that only one side can be right, then when gay activists win, it means that you lose.

If you insist that morality must be enshrined in the law, then you ought not be surprised when someone else's morality gets enshrined in the law.

I would think, given the fatalism on this board about the "never-ending liberalization of the culture," then maybe you guys might want to rethink the notion that the "laws ought to protect and promote" morality, lest you continue to paint yourselves into a corner.

Corporations are followers of social trends.

Sure, when social trends give them some market advantage.

Right. That's why they're advertising their position on these issues during the Super Bowl and the 6:00 news hours, and wherever else anyone might look. I mean, it seems like everywhere I look I see Aetna reminding their customers of their political activism. And the reason for this is so obvious--because they're seeking an advantage with the market (read: the public), rather than with the political class.

In seriousness, I have Aetna Insurance, and I don't remember any mailing from them seeking to press the golden "market advantage" they get by this kind of thing. Following Lydia, I would suggest rather that 1) the advantage they seek is not with "the market," but with the left, and with the government leviathan in general; and that 2) any policy position which suggests as a solution that they should be forced to devote more of their resources lobbying and catering to that constituency, is self-defeating. I haven't noticed that federal regulators are dominated by social conservatives either.

My point is that conservatives have long insisted, and continue to insist, that it is a zero-sum game.

Yes, Phil, because in this area, I think that's an accurate way to put it. In fact, I have several posts on that subject called "The Zero-Sum Game." Because either we call two men "married" in law or we don't. There's this thing called the law of excluded middle. Between those two, there isn't any space. And if we don't recognize those unions as marriages in law, the left says we're not "letting" them do what they want. And if we do, then _we're_ not being allowed to do what we want, which is to _refrain_ from calling them "married." It's actually quite simple.

I suppose that isn't really a liberal-conservative dichotomy, it is more a human-inhuman dichotomy.

If you want to call it human-inhuman, but my point is just that it's _not_ liberal-conservative. If someone has x amount of dollars and sends his children to schools where they are raised to be liberals (plus reinforcing this at home), and those kids grow up to be rich and powerful, then they are going to be rich, liberal, and powerful. This isn't going to be changed by forcing everyone to jump through various extra governmental hoops to break up their businesses into smaller units.

Not to mention the economic damage likely to be done by any such drastic policies (80 to 100!!?).

The whole thing is conjectural: Let's do something draconian that *very likely will* tank our economy (yet further, at a time when we're already in recession) because of an abstract theory that somehow the existence of large businesses has a sort of anti-magic that makes America more socially liberal, which anti-magic can be unwound by saying the spell backwards, aka, forcing businesses to be smaller.

I don't buy it.

William's mistake is that he's caught up in whether it is true that the individuals who make up a homosexual couple are "single." That's a mistake.

I want this on record: Phil thinks it's a mistake to get caught up in the truth. And that therefore he is not averse to falsehoods being enshrined in law.

If William framed the issue differently, and contended that his right to believe what he wants is the same right as the homosexual couples' right to believe what they want, he'd be in a better position in the long run.

I would? How? They then won't sue me for not taking their wedding picture? I think Phil means that I have a right to believe, and advocate for, what I want as long as I don't object to the legalization of what single homosexuals who think they are couples want, which means that I can't be an advocate after all.

If you insist that morality must be enshrined in the law, then you ought not be surprised when someone else's morality gets enshrined in the law.

We're not surprised (ever heard of Roe v. Wade?) but chagrined, because we're all caught up in thinking that laws ought to be grounded in truth. If you oppose morality being enshrined in law, then you should oppose legalizing same-sex marriage because it does exactly that.

What Phil's proposing for our side is not really "live and let live," which is what we've always done, but "lie down and die."

Interesting point that occurs to me. A variant on the socio-economic reasoning of those who think that eliminating large corporations will help make America less socially liberal: Rich people have a lot of influence. Rich people tend to be socially liberal and to use their influence to push liberal causes. Therefore, if we eliminate riches by having the government simply confiscate 100% of income over, say, $80,000 per year, we will make America more socially conservative by eliminating the liberal influence of the wealthy.

I trust I don't need to point out the folly of _that_ line of reasoning.

Phil writes:

I've pointed out, essentially, that you will not only lose the legal battle, but you will also lose the cultural battle. And you're responding by calling me "wrong," and then pointing out how you're losing both the legal and cultural battle. A photographer in New Mexico was sued for refusing to photograph a gay commitment ceremony? Gosh, why won't those damned liberals "live and let live?"

The problem, as I see it, is an inability (or a refusal) to separate the question of whether a belief is true from whether a belief is believed.

It seems to me perfectly rational to believe that our sexual powers are ordered toward male-female conjugal unity. I understand, of course, that people disagree with that understanding. But it is certainly not implausible. Given that, it seems that we should be tolerant on matters of these deep disagreements, that the state should neither coerce the photographer nor coerce homosexuals who want to engage in private conduct. But marriage is not a private act. It is a public institution which by its very nature demands universal coercion, the sort of coercion that does not tolerate dissent.

Our of curiosity, Phil, can you tell us what you think marriage is? I, for example, can give a simple description of human being: rational animal. Is marriage a thing like that, or is it something else? I suspect that many reasonable people will find your answer unconvincing, and something that they can not in good conscience, even after evaluating the arguments carefully and with integrity, cannot accept. If that's the case, what is the liberal thing to do? Coerce them to agree, reveling in their being crushed by the trajectory of the culture?

"the socio-economic reasoning of those who think that eliminating large corporations will help make America less socially liberal"

"...the Tea Party wants smaller government without sufficient attention to centralized economic power, and OWS wants a decrease in concentrated economic power without sufficient attention to the way in which that concentration has been enabled by government. Each is peddling a partial argument – and replicating the rutted arguments that have too long dominated American politics."

~~~Patrick Deneen

It is not the liberal-ness of big corporations that's making America liberal, it's what Booth Tarkington called "Bigness" and Louis Bromfield called "the Machine": the alliance of corporate and government power in which a statist economic giantism develops, a giantism which has no regard whatsoever for tradition of any sort, including traditional morality.

I would? How? They then won't sue me for not taking their wedding picture?

I'm going to predict that you personally will never be sued for refusing to take a wedding picture, William Luse. If that exact scenario does occur in the future, feel free to contact me and gloat.

But, in a grander sense, yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about. If you--and by you, I mean "people who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong who are also trying to prevent it from becoming legal"--were to fiercely advocate for the position that [the right of a photographer to refuse to photograph a wedding] and [the right of the same-sex couple to get married] are the same right, then you could make it less likely for photographers to be sued.

As I said, what is most relevant about a deeply held belief, with regard to the persons holding it, is not whether the belief is true. It is whether the belief is believed.

Consider the following scenarios:
1. A school is legally forcing elementary school students to eat broccoli. Not just requiring them to eat broccoli, but actually forcing it into their mouths, grabbing their little chins to make them chew, and holding their noses until they swallow it.
2. A Jewish caterer is successfully sued because she refused to provide food for a Christian wedding.
3. A strict segregationist is sued because he won't rent a room in his bed-and-breakfast to a black couple.

Under the prevailing logic of you and Lydia, William, the solution to advocate would be:
1. Ban broccoli.
2. Ban Christian weddings.
3. Ban black people.

Obviously, I realize you're not a complete idiot, so you don't need for me to explain to you why it actually wouldn't be a good idea to advocate that we ban broccoli, that we ban Christian weddings, or that we ban black people.

However, your capacity for tailoring a solution to fit the problem flies out the window when a photographer in New Mexico is sued for refusing to photograph a same-sex wedding. Instead of advocating for the rights of photographers to refuse to photograph events that they don't want to photograph, you imply that the reasonable solution is to ban same-sex marriage.

That is, of course, horsefeathers. But the adamant refusal of the right to acknowledge that this position is horsefeathers is one of the major reasons that the right is losing this battle.

You insist that each instance be a referendum on your specific beliefs. Instead of arguing that owners of bed-and-breakfast establishments deserve the right to refuse services based on their religious beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be, you argue that bed-and-breakfast establishments deserve the right to refuse services base on your specific religious beliefs, and only those beliefs.

If you fight for religious freedom, then it doesn't matter whether I agree with your beliefs. But if you fight for religious privilege--special rules for businesses and individuals who agree with your beliefs--then the fact that I disagree with your beliefs becomes very, very relevant. You are forcing a referendum on your deeply held beliefs.

In this sense, it doesn't matter whether your beliefs are true or not. What matters is that I don't believe them. If you force a referendum on your beliefs and you end up losing, you lose whether or not your beliefs are true.

I think Phil means that I have a right to believe, and advocate for, what I want as long as I don't object to the legalization of what single homosexuals who think they are couples want, which means that I can't be an advocate after all.

I think you are confusing what you have a right to advocate with what you have a right to do. It's easier to wrap your head around it if you consider other people's beliefs, instead of your own.

Let's say I believe all men should be circumcised. I have a right to circumcise myself. But I don't have a right to circumcise you against your will.

As you just explained, according to your way of thinking, this is a grave imposition, since I can't force you to be circumcised. But any reasonable person can see that the right to advocate for circumcision is very different from the right to force others to be circumcised.

Let's say that I am an old-school segregationist, and I don't believe in interracial marriage. I have a right to marry a person of the same race as me, and a right not to marry a person of a different race. And I have a right to advocate that the races don't intermarry.

But let's say I try to use the law to force interracial couples to remain unmarried. Phil, on this board, would argue that I am acting inappropriately, that what I am doing is wrong. But William Luse would tell Phil that he's wrong, that a segregationist who can't prevent interracial couples from legally marrying is having his rights abrogated in exactly the same way that the interracial couple who can't marry is. William Luse, based on what he writes, sees this as an apples-to-apples comparison.

Our of curiosity, Phil, can you tell us what you think marriage is?

Are you asking me to define what civil marriage is, Thomas Aquinas? Perhaps if you can give me your definition, I'll better know what form you want the answer to take.

It is not the liberal-ness of big corporations that's making America liberal, it's what Booth Tarkington called "Bigness"

Really, NM? So if everybody who owned a successful large business held the views of, say, the owners of Chik-Fil-A or of Tom Monaghan of Domino's Pizza, they would _still_ be filing amicus briefs against DOMA? (Remember, that was the subject of the main post, supposed to show us how "corporate America is not on our side.")

Obviously not.

"Obviously not."

C'mon, Lydia. Even a stopped clock, etc., etc.

Because either we call two men "married" in law or we don't.

Right, just like "either we allow Jews, under the law, to go to temple, or we don't." And since we allow Jews to go to temple, that means that the law is saying that Judaism is right and Christianity is wrong. There is no "middle," because the purpose of law is to be the ultimate arbiter of Truth.

And if we don't recognize those unions as marriages in law, the left says we're not "letting" them do what they want. And if we do, then _we're_ not being allowed to do what we want, which is to _refrain_ from calling them "married." It's actually quite simple.

My mother is a Catholic, Lydia, and doesn't believe that a person, once married, can or should divorce. One of her close friends, married in her twenties, divorced in her thirties. Mom had a terrible time with this, even more so when her friend remarried. In my mom's view, her friend isn't really married to her current husband, because her first marriage never really "ended."

My mom can call her friend up and tell her that she doesn't feel the new marriage is valid. She can refrain from using the word "married" or "husband." My mom is even free to send a Christmas card to her friend and the first husband and pretend they're still a couple. The rights that my mom has had to give up, with regard to 2nd marriages, are exactly the same rights that you will have to give up, Lydia, when same-sex marriage is legal.

In your view, Lydia, has my mom been prevented from doing what she wants, because the law permitted her friend to remarry?

So, uh, Phil: was I right that you are not averse to falsehoods such as same-sex marriage being enshrined in law?

I don't think that your right to denounce homosexuality will disappear. I think you'll be able to preach about sin and immorality until you're blue in the face. But the way that the culture responds to people who express that viewpoint about homosexuality has shifted, and will continue to shift.

The same forces that brought us the top-down acceptance of homosexuality are now attempting to do the same with pedophilia.

I'm going to call it right now. In 30 years, "conservatives" will tell us that if we don't legalize pederasty then we'll just be on the wrong side of history.

When the singularity happens, we'll get to find out if manbearpig (that's a link to a real manbearpig chimera attempt, not South Park) can marry his gay human lover.

"I'm going to call it right now. In 30 years, 'conservatives' will tell us that if we don't legalize pederasty then we'll just be on the wrong side of history."

Yep. Wait till the APA wakes up one morning and decides that pedophilia should no longer be considered a mental aberration. In the meantime, I think that what will occur will be attempts to lower the age of consent, since the modernist notion of consent is really the only thing keeping the child sex floodgates from opening. Once the elites realize that this understanding of consent is completely arbitrary and actually incoherent all bets are off w/r/t pedophilia.

Phil, there are many, many situations that your mother could have found herself in, depending on her lot in life, in which, yes, she would not have been permitted to refuse to recognize her friend's marriage. Legal marriage _is_ legal recognition. Had your mother owned a small business, for example, and had she given spousal benefits to her employees but refused them to her friend's spouse, she would have been able to be punished by a lawsuit. Had she been a teacher and had there been children, had she refused to refer to the parents as married, she would doubtless have been fired. Had she been a property owner and refused to rent to them on the grounds that they were living in sin, this would have been illegal. Had she been a person running a wedding-related business--cake making, photography, florist, etc., etc.--and refused to serve their wedding, she could have been sued for religious discrimination (because their religious beliefs treated it as a real marriage and she disagreed). Had she been a clerk in the office of justice of the peace and refused them a license, she would have lost her job. Had she been a judge and, in a subsequent divorce or separation, refused to recognize the marriage as legally valid, she could have been impeached for flouting the law.

These are only some examples. Marriages are legal entities. That's the whole point. Purely private marriages with no legal recognition are not "banned." If you can find a friend or a pastor to go through a private ceremony to "marry" you to either your boyfriend or your dining room table, nobody is stopping you. The whole point here is having the union *legally recognized*. When a union is legally recognized, people have to recognize it! This is going to come up for lots of people in lots of situations. Your mother just didn't happen to be in one of those situations vis a vis her friend, but that was just a matter of how things fell out in their lives.

I blogged a year or two ago about a case in Massachusetts: An employee was harassed repeatedly in the course of a day by a fellow employee who told him she was going to get "married" that weekend (to another woman). When the fellow employee, a man, refused to answer, she kept repeating it to him. Finally, he was goaded enough that he made some comment to her to the effect that that was not good, at which point she began laughing and saying, "HR, buddy, HR." He was indeed fired by HR, which defended the firing on the grounds that they were simply following anti-discrimination laws and that _he_ had been guilty of "harassing" activities in the workplace. The idea of "hostile work environment," which is part and parcel of anti-discrimination laws, means that expressing at any time or in any circumstances in the workplace your opinion that two men or two women are not really married, particularly in a state that recognizes this as marriage, can get you fired on the grounds that the store will be violating anti-discrimination law if it allows you to express that opinion on company grounds. The irony, of course, is that this is a _glaring_ example of a "hostile work environment" toward the employee who, in fact, believes in traditional marriage.

That is just another example.

Yes, it's a zero-sum game.

Of course, Mike T realizes that the manbearpig was an April Fool's gag... right?

The Elephant

Of course, Mike T realizes that the manbearpig was an April Fool's gag... right?

Yes, but it is only a matter of time before someone tries to do it. They're already toying with purely animal chimera.

Phil, there are many, many situations that your mother could have found herself in, depending on her lot in life, in which, yes, she would not have been permitted to refuse to recognize her friend's marriage.

You realize, Lydia, that second (and third) marriages are legal in the United States, right? So all of these harms that you are rattling off, these supposedly horrific violations of individual rights that you list, are not hypothetical. They are all already happening to people all over the country. Teachers who refuse to refer to their student's divorced-and-remarried parents as "married" face a constant, daily threat of being fired. Catholic city clerks and photographers are force to "participate" in weddings that are against their religion.

And, since divorce in this country is much, much more common than homosexuality, this is statistically a much bigger problem than the problems that will face those who believe same-sex marriage is wrong. Why, the horrific dystopia that you have predicted in the wake of legal SSM is already here, in much bigger numbers, with regard to remarriage!

And yet, somehow, we manage to trudge along as a country. When is the last time you read about a person who deeply opposes second-marriages facing legal issues because of their deeply held beliefs? What has happened here, Lydia? How is it that Catholics have managed to weather this colossal imposition into their rights?

If you are claiming, as you seem to be, that same-sex marriage will cause its opponents exactly the same kinds of harms that my mother's friend's marriage caused her (and people like her), I would probably agree with you.

The irony, of course, is that this is a _glaring_ example of a "hostile work environment" toward the employee who, in fact, believes in traditional marriage.

So, if anti-discrimination laws in this country are problematic, we should fix that problem through marriage laws?

Can you see how the solution that you are proposing does not fit the problem you have illustrated?

2nd attempt - So, uh, Phil: was I right that you are not averse to falsehoods such as same-sex marriage being enshrined in law?

No, Phil, I can't. By the way, you _do_ understand that it's the advocates of homosexual "marriage" who are trying to _change_ the legal situation, right? All these references to "banning" something are almost amusing. This "ban" amounts to refraining from putting into place a de novo legal situation in which something not previously called "marriage" nor even dreamed to be marriage for thousands upon thousands of years until quite recently is called "marriage." One might as well say that I advocate "banning" dolphin adoption because I would oppose suddenly declaring dolphin personhood and having the legal apparatus of child adoption applied to relations between dolphins and human beings.

And, of course, the reason that the Catholics in these situations aren't facing these problems is because either a) they don't know that the people in question are divorced and being remarried (which it is not possible to avoid knowing in the case of homosexual couples) or b) they don't consider it worth the hassle to make a fuss over it or c) they aren't that bothered about it. If they were and did, of course these problems would ensue.

A lot more people will care and will feel bothered and coerced about recognizing, helping to celebrate (in the case of wedding services), and facilitating homosexual "marriage."

But I find instructive the way that you move from ridiculing the notion that people might be forced to do something they don't want to do by the very fact of homosexual "marriage" to ridiculing the notion that it _matters_. It's pretty clear from your recent comments that you really wouldn't care if all the parallel situations w.r.t. homosexual couples did occur. This is exactly the bait and switch I predicted above.

It would be a little more honorable in debate terms if you came out and said, "Okay, Lydia, you got me. I was wrong. I talked like your claim that people would be forced to recognize someone as married whom they didn't want to recognize was a silly and meaningless claim, like we could simply be libertarians on all sides, and you just came up with a whole bunch of examples in which that very thing would happen as a necessary consequence of expanding the concept of 'marriage' in this way. So it does indeed follow from the legal recognition of homosexual couples as married that people who don't want to say that these are real marriages will be forced to do so."

By the way: A Catholic can tell himself, if he's called upon to recognize the reality of a remarriage of a divorced person, that it is _possible_ that the first marriage was null and that the second marriage is real. Nullification tribunals in the Catholic Church recognize nullity but do not create it. Even if the couple has never worried their heads about it, the possibility of a real second marriage is at least there in the background.

Obviously, no such "out" is available for the conscience of the person who holds to normal views of marriage (which includes a lot more people than Catholics who worry about divorce and remarriage, I might add) concerning the attempt to force us to call homosexual couples "married."

William Luse,
Are you asking me if I feel that same-sex marriage should be legal?

All these references to "banning" something are almost amusing. This "ban" amounts to refraining from putting into place a de novo legal situation in which something not previously called "marriage"

If I thought that you believe that, in states where it is now legal, same-sex marriage should remain legal, I would respond to this line of reasoning. But since I'm pretty sure that's not the case, I'll ignore this red herring.

One might as well say that I advocate "banning" dolphin adoption because I would oppose suddenly declaring dolphin personhood

I know that you're not trying to be offensive in the way that this is offensive, and I also know that "That's offensive!" is not a claim that necessarily holds much water for you, but perhaps you can recognize how choosing analogies where a person-to-person legal construct is compared to a person-to-animal legal construct suggests that you are analogizing a person to an animal. And, given your expressed views on personhood, perhaps you can see how comparing a person to an animal, even an hypothetical person, is offensive in the way that comparing a person to a vegetable is offensive.

Realize that I'm not saying this refutes your claim. I understand where you're going with the analogy, and I'm not trying to pretend that being offended means your logic is bad. I'm just saying that you, of all people, should be open to the idea that comparing people to non-humans has unsavory implications.

And, of course, the reason that the Catholics in these situations aren't facing these problems is because either a) they don't know that the people in question are divorced and being remarried

Are you saying, then, that in a literal sense, it's "all in their head?" That is, the issue is not what they have to do, it is what they may or may not know while they do it?

b) they don't consider it worth the hassle to make a fuss over it or c) they aren't that bothered about it.

But whose choice is it to decide whether to make a fuss or be bothered by it? The law has no say in whether a Catholic chooses to be bothered by a second marriage.

But I find instructive the way that you move from ridiculing the notion that people might be forced to do something they don't want to do by the very fact of homosexual "marriage" to ridiculing the notion that it _matters_.

That's not quite right, Lydia. What I've done is a) pointed out that your examples of "being forced to do something" are mostly illusory, b) pointed out that you are not making an apples-to-apples comparison, and pointed out that the harms you have listed are not the result of legalizing same-sex marriage.

a) You keep pretending that the harm of being forced to recognize a marriage that you feel is wrong or immoral is unique to same-sex marriage, but that's because you insist on arguing for religious privilege, instead of religious freedom. The truth is that the harms faced by people who don't wish to "recognize" same-sex marriage are faced every day by every person who thinks that any given legal marriage is immoral, and that these harms--which are already in the status quo--amount to very nearly nothing.

b) You keep using the term "forced to recognize" as if recognize is an important action verb. That verb really means "to identify something from knowledge [of it]." You're setting a really low bar for "being forced to do something." It's like, laws against theft have to weigh the interests of people who don't want to be robbed against the interests of those who want to rob them. Laws against rape have to weigh the interests of those who don't want to be raped against the interests of those who want to rape them. These are not apples-to-apples comparisons.

Yes, technically, a would-be thief is "forced" to refrain from stealing, a would-be rapist is "forced" to refrain from rape, and a person who finds homosexual marriage immoral will be "forced" to follow existing laws with regard to other people's spouses. I would bring up, as a joke, the example of a city clerk who is "forced" to sign her name to the same kind of document that she spends all day signing--except you already brought that example up, and you were serious. OMG. She had to sign her name, only this time, because of the knowledge in her head, it was different.

c) The harms you have listed are not the result of same-sex marriage. A man was fired from his job because of workplace nondiscrimination policy. A photographer was sued because of state nondiscrimination laws. Etc. The law that led to the results you decry was a nondiscrimination law, and you propose that we fix it through marriage law, even though both individuals could have been fired/sued in a state where same-sex marriage was not legal.

Phil, you are saying stuff that is so silly that I'm just really tired of the go-round. Being forced to be a wedding coordinator for two men who are getting "married," on pain of a fine, is similar to being told that you must _refrain_ from rape? And calling this coercion--"Do the wedding coordinating project for these two men or be fined"--is setting a "low bar" for talking about being forced to do something? Puh-lease.

And _of course_ you're not forcing someone to do something against his will if he doesn't know what's going on. So the fact that a devout Catholic could easily not know that the couple whose wedding he was selling a cake for contained a divorced member but couldn't _avoid_ knowing if a couple consisted of, you know, two men, is _certainly_ relevant to whether he's being forced to act against his conscience. This is easy and obvious stuff.

Yes, I do oppose adding "sexual orientation" to non-discrimination statutes precisely because these things can be done under non-discrimination statutes even without homosexual "marriage." However, homosexual "marriage" gives even more pretexts for it. For example, it's no accident that the incident in which the Christian man was harassed in the workplace happened in Massachusetts. This permitted everyone who wanted to bully him to say that he was refusing to acknowledge the "merely factual statement" that his co-worker was "getting married." In fact, that's exactly what his employers did say, implying that this somehow was something he had to acknowledge.

Employers who offer spousal benefits have not _yet_ been forced to do so (that I know of) for same-sex couples in states without either civil unions or homosexual "marriage." The employers can take their stand on the legal status of marriage and refuse until that status is expanded.

I could give more examples, but it's pretty much a waste of time with you.

So the totalitarian homosexual lobby certainly has an additional weapon with the official instantiation of homosexual "marriage," and that additional weapon certainly will result in more people's being forced to cooperate in the normalization of homosexual behavior, though the totalitarians do the best they can with non-discrimination statutes, and have a frightening amount of success.

I think I'm done trying to reason with you on this. The examples I have given are real, not illusory. You tried to say at the beginning that nobody was going to be forced to acknowledge a homosexual "marriage," that we could all just live and let live, that there is no zero-sum game. You've been refuted six ways from zero, and you don't even realize it.

a person-to-person legal construct is compared to a person-to-animal legal construct suggests that you are analogizing a person to an animal.

Phil, are you aware that there are people who ALREADY CLAIM that they should be allowed to marry their pet? Really, as in they would do it tomorrow if the state discovered that the law didn't prevent it.

Once you grant to the state the right to declare a brand new meaning for a social and cultural construct that is (at least) 6000 years old and has been constant through every society on the planet, to become now something wholly new and different, you obliterate any objective standard by which we might be able to say "oh, no, THAT's not marriage!" Maybe it isn't what you thought marriage is, but that's no standard. Are you saying that you are on board with the state calling marriage people marrying 4 men, 3 women, 2 cats, and 4 inanimate objects in a group wedding?

Lydia,
With all due respect, I suggest that the reason you find this so frustrating is (and also the reason you are failing to be logically consistent) is because you keep envisioning your examples as specific people who share your specific beliefs, instead of envisioning them as representative Americans whose deeply held beliefs are being violated.

For example, instead of acknowledging that it is wrong for a city clerk to have to sign a form for a couple which violates that city clerk's deeply held beliefs, you're focusing on the content of those beliefs.

That means that instead of asking me, as a third party, to evaluate the abstract principle at stake (should an individual be required to perform a duty for a couple of whom they disapprove?) you are asking me to evaluate your specific beliefs (should an individual have a special exemption from performing duties for same-sex couples?)

Do you agree with my assessment of your position? That is, do you agree that your position forces a third party to evaluate your specific beliefs, instead of forcing a third party to evaluate the general principles at stake in nondiscrimination laws?

That is, do you agree that your position forces a third party to evaluate your specific beliefs, instead of forcing a third party to evaluate the general principles at stake in nondiscrimination laws?

Nope. All I'm asking you to acknowledge is that the redefinition of "marriage" to include homosexual couples will indeed involve coercing people--quite a few people--to violate their own beliefs by forcing them to acknowledge that something is marriage that they do not believe is marriage. You scorned this very notion and implied, again and again, that this could be a win-win situation in which everyone is simply left alone to believe whatever they want to believe. I am arguing that, because state-recognized marriage is a legally ubiquitous institution, conferring that special, state-recognized status on homosexual couples does not permit everyone simply to follow their own consciences on this matter, because there *definitely are* and *definitely will be* people who don't agree that these people are married but will be coerced to speak and act in overt ways as though they are married. Coercion is _not_ an overstatement of this situation, and seeing that it is does _not_ require an evaluation of the truth of my moral beliefs.

Frankly, any real libertarian, regardless of his beliefs about homosexuality, should be able to see this in a heartbeat.

Once you grant to the state the right to declare a brand new meaning for a social and cultural construct that is (at least) 6000 years old and has been constant through every society on the planet, to become now something wholly new and different, you obliterate any objective standard by which we might be able to say "oh, no, THAT's not marriage!"

Tony, there are several fallacies in your statement.

Marriage may be a cultural construct, but if so, it exists as a cultural construct independent of the state's legal structure of marriage. You could name hundreds of religions which have requirements and rules for marriage that are different from state law. Catholics do not recognize divorce. Some religions do not permit interfaith marriages. Etc.

Most of these religions recognize that a change in state law does not equal an automatic change in their religious beliefs, nor does it indicate that the state is sending the message that their religious beliefs are false.

Therefore, as you can surely recognize, state law is not the arbiter of the cultural construct of marriage. The state defines, for example, disabilities for the purposes of state law, but that doesn't mean that a person who is "legally blind" will be acknowledged as "blind," in casual conversation, by a person who has a more stringent definition of the term. The state determines who is a "legal parent" with regard to childcare responsibilities, but that doesn't prevent a child from forming a personal opinion about who her "real dad" or "real mom" is.

Civil marriage is a contract between two individuals, who must be licensed by the state to enter into that contract, who then enjoy certain benefits, rights, privileges, and exemptions as determined by state law. When the law changes such that the specific requirements about which adults may enter into the contract change, nothing about that legal change will empower animals to enter into contracts with humans.

You cannot possibly believe that permitting adult women to enter into a different type of contract arrangement will logically lead to cats being able to enter into contracts in the United States. Your statement is a textbook example of a slippery-slope argument, and an illustration of why this argument is a logical fallacy.

Now, since you surely know that civil marriage laws in the United States cannot possibly be 6000 years old, it's clear that you're talking about something other than civil marriage. The "cultural construct" that you are concerned with is something distinct from the dry, boring contract laws that set the rules for the issuing of marriage licenses in U.S. states.

Unfortunately, instead of choosing to draw a line between the "cultural construct" of marriage and the stuffy laws of civil marriage, you're pretending that they're the same thing. As I've explained above, that has been a bad strategy for people who believe as you do.

Phil, you are rejecting the bare facts: in Canada some people are being fined and put into jail for saying what THEY think. Not for "evaluating someone else's beliefs", but for reading the Bible in public because they think the Bible is worthy of reading out loud. There is no reason to think it can't happen here. You seem to be OK with that kind of persecution.

Nope. All I'm asking you to acknowledge is that the redefinition of "marriage" to include homosexual couples[...]

Can you see, Lydia, how I asked you whether your position required me to take a position on your specific beliefs, and then, even though you said "Nope," you went on to use language that described only your specific beliefs.

If you can't rephrase what you "asking me to acknowledge" without making explicit reference to the content of the specific beliefs you hold, then perhaps you actually are forcing me to evaluate your particular beliefs, eh?

[...]will indeed involve coercing people--quite a few people--to violate their own beliefs by forcing them to acknowledge that something is marriage that they do not believe is marriage.

The verbs you keep using are "acknowledge" and "recognize." Perhaps because those verbs are vague and not particularly strong, I'm not seeing what your issue is. It's like you're a member of a country club, and you're saying that if we let black people into the club, you'll be forced to acknowledge that there are black people in the club. Um...okay? But that doesn't really force you to do anything. (--Yes it does! I'll be forced to recognize that there are black people in the club.)

Do you believe that all photographers should have the right not to photograph weddings that violate their beliefs, Lydia? Or just Christians? Do you believe that all city clerks should have the right to refuse to sign a form for marriages that they disagree with, or just Christians?

William Luse,
Are you asking me if I feel that same-sex marriage should be legal?

Is your browser transliterating everything into Greek? It was a pretty damned simple question.

Do you believe that all photographers should have the right not to photograph weddings that violate their beliefs,

Phil, this is a simple "right to associate" or, in this case, NOT to associate issue. Yes, a thousand times yes. A photographer has the right to choose to offer, or not to offer, to bring his commercial enterprise into focus when he doesn't want to. His commerce is part of his person - it is a false idea to think of his action in the market as somehow divorced from his person. If he doesn't want to engage his person as a participant in an activity that he thinks is evil, he has the right to not engage his commercial activity in it. Obviously, that goes for non-Christian photographers as well.

What part of the "conscience clause" concept don't you get?

Oh, and Phil, in my last comment above, I didn't resort to "acknowledge" or "recognize" in the least.

So, using your talent to celebrate a union is similar to just sort of "having" people in the same club with you, going to a club where particular other people happen to be? Which is why we shouldn't use the word "coerce"?

Love it.

Can't believe how well my earlier prediction is playing out: "What, little old us, try to force anybody to do anything? Try to force people to affirm homosexual unions against their consciences? Why, no, of course not. We're just asking you to allow the _other_ group to hold _their_ beliefs. We're not trying to force _you_ to do anything. Oh. That. Well, that's _nothing_. _That_ doesn't count. There's no problem with people's having to do _that_. It doesn't even deserve to be called 'coercion'. It's just like having blacks in one's country club, or not raping people, or something...Those umpteen examples you brought up are just dumb. I can't believe you brought them up. I won't even address all of them."

Phil,

As you keep digging yourself deeper into the hole that Lydia started for you, I also thought I'd bring up the fact that even if we stick with just "beliefs" then changing the law will impact how people view that is and is not moral. Yes, there is a distinction between what is legal and what is moral as you detailed in your examples from civil marriage law, but those of us who believe that homosexual acts are deeply immoral will now be forced to live in a world in which our children go to school and are taught by their teachers (and the surrounding culture) that the law allows two men and two women to get married as if this was O.K. We then have to explain to our kids why our society is screwed up and allowed this abomination and why it is not O.K., when quite frankly they shouldn't even hear about Heather and her two mommies at school or turn on the TV and watch a news report about the latest attempt by some misguided State legislature to redefine marriage. You and your friends are corrupting my kids and I want you to stop.

And _of course_ you're not forcing someone to do something against his will if he doesn't know what's going on. So the fact that a devout Catholic could easily not know that the couple whose wedding he was selling a cake for contained a divorced member but couldn't _avoid_ knowing if a couple consisted of, you know, two men, is _certainly_ relevant to whether he's being forced to act against his conscience.

As far as the nondiscrimination law is concerned, it wouldn't matter if he did know that it was a second marriage. The couple could specifically go out of their way to tell him that it is a remarriage for one (or both) of them, and he could still be coerced by the law into baking them a cake. So yes, it is obvious that same-sex couples are "violating his conscience", but that obviousness doesn't make a difference to what the law requires.

I'll be forced to recognize that there are black people in the club.

Just because they are in the club doesn't mean they have a right to get their picture taken or eat food or have their parking passes stamped, even if they are happy to pay for it. If they would only stop acting black, they and their jive talking liberal friends wouldn't be corrupting Jeff Singer's kids.

The couple could specifically go out of their way to tell him that it is a remarriage for one (or both) of them, and he could still be coerced by the law into baking them a cake.

Not sure where _you're_ going with this, Step2, but I agree with this statement. My point in what you quoted was simply that the possibility of not knowing probably accounts for some part of the sociological fact that there haven't been blow-ups concerning Catholics and remarried couples.

But one thing that isn't acknowledged here either is the greater aggressiveness of the homosexual activist movement as well as the fact that this is all coming up after non-discrimination laws are firmly entrenched. I would guess that back when divorce gradually became liberalized, if a wedding coordinator had openly told a remarrying couple that he was uncomfortable with doing their wedding, they would have gone and looked for a different wedding coordinator. And now, when, "Sue!" or "Discrimination!" is in everybody's mind, divorce and remarriage are so widely accepted that it probably wouldn't occur to the coordinator to ask or to try to maintain that particular standard. And it's unlikely that you're going to find remarrying people going out of their way to _create_ such a situation by making "test cases" in which they tell all these details and jump on the wedding business if the person balks.

However, yes, _if_ someone who runs a photography business, etc., were told this and _if_ he balked, he probably would be coerced nowadays by the remarrying couple as well. And that could be legitimately called "coercion" as well.

Just because they are in the club doesn't mean they have a right to get their picture taken or eat food or have their parking passes stamped, even if they are happy to pay for it. If they would only stop acting black, they and their jive talking liberal friends wouldn't be corrupting Jeff Singer's kids.

Step 2,

For what it's worth, this got a chuckle out of me. Of course, you can't get me upset because I reject the notion that (a) there are similarities between race a homosexual tendencies and (b) that all racial discrimination was irrational and hateful and that civil rights laws have been the greatest legislative achievement in America since the Constitutional Convention. But for now, I'll just chuckle...

Step2, although I think racial bigotry is generally hateful and sinful, I am not sure it is illegal. If I recall correctly, court cases about clubs came down to the clubs getting public benefits, so the public was "paying" for the discriminatory behavior. If a private club were to get NO public benefits, including no special tax breaks, the law says this club may discriminate against blacks. Is this where you want to go with the photographer?

Tony writes,

Phil, this is a simple "right to associate" or, in this case, NOT to associate issue. Yes, a thousand times yes. A photographer has the right to choose to offer, or not to offer

Uh, Tony? I don't disagree with you. The only difference is that I don't think that any photographers should be forced to photograph a wedding that they don't want to, and you and Lydia seem think that only certain, special photographers deserve this right. Read on:

So, using your talent to celebrate a union is similar to just sort of "having" people in the same club with you, going to a club where particular other people happen to be? Which is why we shouldn't use the word "coerce"?

Lydia, you are right that those are two different things. The examples that you bring up have also been two different types of examples.

First, you bring up examples of people who were required by a law to do something that they didn't want to do. The laws in question here are not marriage law, however.

If a Muslim photographer in New Mexico were forced to photograph a Christian wedding, we would not conclude that the real problem is that Christian weddings are legal. The specific religious beliefs of the people involved in the wedding are immaterial--and so are the specific religious beliefs of the party who is offended.

The problem is not that Christian weddings cause offense. It is that photographers are forced to participate in a ceremony that violates their beliefs.

Similarly, when a photographer is forced to photograph a same-sex wedding, it is not rational to conclude that the problem lies with same-sex weddings.

The "umpteen examples" you brought up are non sequiturs, Lydia. All umpteen of them. You refer to "using your talent to celebrate a union" but you don't really mean any given union.

I'm the one who has pointed out that it wrong to force someone to use their talents to celebrate "a union." You pointedly refuse to acknowledge that someone could be offended by a union other than a same-sex union, probably because you know as well as I do that when you take that fact into consideration, none of your examples hold water.

Please answer the following yes-no question, Lydia: If a photographer or caterer were forced by the state to use their talents for an interfaith marriage, or a marriage with a 20-year age difference, or a Christian marriage, would it be reasonable under any circumstances to use that example to argue that the law should prevent interfaith marriages, or marriages with an age difference, or Christian marriages?

Actually, I would be perfectly fine with removing all non-discrimination laws for _at least_ expressive activity such as photography, printing, celebratory cake-making, etc., and allowing Muslim, Catholic, or whatever people to have specialty businesses in which they do those activities only for people whose views conform to their standards. I think that would be a great idea. However, I would not be so naive as to write comments as if that is _already_ the legal situation we are in.

In this thread, I brought up my many examples to show that marriage is woven into the warp and woof of society--partly by our non-discriminatory culture but in other ways as well--to such an extent that it is *misleading* to speak as though it is possible to redefine the term "marriage" to include homosexual couples while at the same time letting everyone else go on their merry way and continue to live according to their own beliefs.

Whether or not this is an effective argument with a certain person against homosexual "marriage" will depend upon that person's other beliefs about not only homosexual acts but the whole notion of homosexual "marriage." I think that there is a certain contingent of people in the country who, once the "live and let live" rhetoric is punctured, will have second thoughts. They don't really want homosexuality woven into the warp and woof of society to that extent. They don't want homosexual unions to be as ubiquitous, as normalized, *required to be* as accepted as marriages are, and once they realize that marriage isn't the kind of thing that just takes place over somewhere in private and that this cannot be a win-win situation for homosexuals and those who disapprove of their acts, they will think again.

This would, of course, also be true in some strange society in which the government recognized only Muslim marriages as legal marriages. (I know of no such society.) Perhaps in particular marriage in this culture between a Muslim and a non-Muslim would be taboo. If I were an activist in that society advocating the official legal recognition of marriages between non-Muslims or between Muslims and non-Muslims, this would *of course* be advocating a major change in that culture, and it would be positively misleading of me to say, "What skin is it off of your nose if some other Muslim wants to marry a Christian? You can hold your own private belief that this is wrong while letting them do what they want to do. Each group can stick to its own beliefs." That would make it appear that this was not the big social change that it actually would be. Marriage isn't just a private thing like that.

Now, of course, I would not think that an argument against the change, because I would think it a good change. But honesty would require me to admit that this good change was, indeed, a big change and would involve requiring all kinds of people to treat Muslim/non-Muslim marriages as legitimate and normal, to which they would object.

In this thread I brought up these examples because your win-win talk was ridiculous and misleading. And homosexual activists *among themselves* know quite well and admit quite well that they are pushing for something radical, for radical social change, for the _acceptance_, coerced if necessary, of their lifestyle. It's just something radical they think is great and wonderful. When talking with those unconvinced, they trot out the "live and let live" rhetoric because they find it effective. I consider that deceptive.

Do you believe that all photographers should have the right not to photograph weddings that violate their beliefs, Lydia?

Seeing as how the photographer is allegedly a free worker in a free market system, then the answer would be "yes."

However, since liberals believe they can coerce workers into working against their conscience when liberal piety says that the worker's right to control their labor must be obliterated so some whiny pissant can have his or her feelings spared, that is more a theory than practice.

I blogged a year or two ago about a case in Massachusetts: An employee was harassed repeatedly in the course of a day by a fellow employee who told him she was going to get "married" that weekend (to another woman). When the fellow employee, a man, refused to answer, she kept repeating it to him. Finally, he was goaded enough that he made some comment to her to the effect that that was not good, at which point she began laughing and saying, "HR, buddy, HR." He was indeed fired by HR, which defended the firing on the grounds that they were simply following anti-discrimination laws and that _he_ had been guilty of "harassing" activities in the workplace. The idea of "hostile work environment," which is part and parcel of anti-discrimination laws, means that expressing at any time or in any circumstances in the workplace your opinion that two men or two women are not really married, particularly in a state that recognizes this as marriage, can get you fired on the grounds that the store will be violating anti-discrimination law if it allows you to express that opinion on company grounds. The irony, of course, is that this is a _glaring_ example of a "hostile work environment" toward the employee who, in fact, believes in traditional marriage.

The homosexual community has taken great pains to make sure that their rights are a zero sum game for us. As I am not willing to lose fundamental rights to appease a group like the homosexual community, I find that the case for gay rights is almost coming down to a utilitarian calculus. Disregard the morality of protecting their rights and regard their rights purely in propositional terms as a means to an end that must be weighed against the end to which they'll use them. That end being wholly destructive of our liberties.

I cannot find a compelling non-religious argument to oppose that basis for suppressing them (my own sense of morality being firmly that morality is only whatever I find useful for me and mine if I am forced to work outside of a religious reference).

(Not that I actually support suppressing them by force of law. Being a Christian I don't actually support arbitrary crushing of fundamental human rights on utilitarian and selfish grounds. I just find it fun from time to time to explore the blatant nihilism of a world where "God is Dead" or "God is so far away His vote doesn't count" if you prefer the Deist narrative. It's funny to watch liberals who embrace the trappings of Christian culture watch in horror as someone advocates points of view that tend to flow naturally from a nihilistic view of the world.)

By the way, what I've said about the fact that legal marriage is not a private act applies to situations that are not strictly speaking coercive as well as to those that are. I heartily agree with Jeff Singer about corrupting children, but even if one describes the situation simply in terms of normalizing certain behaviors in the presence of children (prescinding from calling that "corrupting"), the fact is that this is a socially inevitable result of granting the legal status of "marriage" to homosexual unions. People are going to say that these people are married! And they are going to do it all over the place--on television, radio, the Internet, in your children's school. The normalization of these relationships is going to be ubiquitous and public. It's going to be everywhere.

Even if every single person doing this were doing so entirely willingly, that normalization is _not_ tantamount to allowing me to live my own life as I please, because one of the ways I please to live my own life is not having my kids hear homosexual relationships called "marriage."

Again, marriage is not private. Redefining it therefore cannot be private.

And, again, that is true whether one approves or disapproves of the redefinition. Those proposing it should honestly admit that, yes, this means that your kids, and you, are going to be exposed more frequently to the concept of homosexuality and that everyone is going to be exposed all over the place to the notion that homosexual relationships are normal and are the equivalent of marriage. So if that bothers you, this situation will bother you.

That's just a matter of honesty. So, again, the talk about "just allowing people to do what they want and you can do what you want" is misleading.

"And, again, that is true whether one approves or disapproves of the redefinition. Those proposing it should honestly admit that, yes, this means that your kids, and you, are going to be exposed more frequently to the concept of homosexuality and that everyone is going to be exposed all over the place to the notion that homosexual relationships are normal and are the equivalent of marriage. So if that bothers you, this situation will bother you."

This, of course, gets things perfectly backwards. Homosexuality became normalized over time. What was a felony became an indifferently enforced misdemeanor and then we had Lawrence. As a result of that normalization and the human instinct to pair-bond certain legal issues arose that were easily solved through the application of well established law. Those issues and the importance of equal protection in the application of our laws made some form of legal recognition inevitable.

The notion that, short of abusive (and illegal) levels of enforced isolation, one can prevent their offspring from becoming aware of Teh Gay is actually touching in its naivete.

"...woven into the warp and woof of society...", is the sort of language one falls back on when one hasn't a case.

"They don't want homosexual unions to be as ubiquitous, as normalized, *required to be* as accepted as marriages are, and once they realize that marriage isn't the kind of thing that just takes place over somewhere in private and that this cannot be a win-win situation for homosexuals and those who disapprove of their acts, they will think again."

We should be clear on at least a couple things:

A certain number of gays are going to form relationships as enduring as heterosexual unions and there is no way to prevent this from happening.

And if there is in fact any win-lose in this matter, the "lose" is wholly in the internal mental life of the self-perceived "loser".

We might reflect on the reality that most of us live anonymous lives. We live in areas of large population density where our social circles and our immediate neighbors coincide wholly by accident. This pattern is also often the case in less dense areas. I live on a private road that allows access to eight parcels. We nod and wave but that's all. I would assert that things like the recent Kardashian fiasco are where the real threats to marriage lie.

Al, of course, by "more frequently" I meant "more frequently than if there were no legal recognition of homosexual unions as 'marriages'." The statement, on that understanding, is very nearly a truism, even with Lawrence (which to call "normalization over time" is a joke).

The idea that without homosexual activism, including this push for homosexual "marriage," homosexuality would be *just as accepted* as it will be _with_ the success of that activism, makes the activism itself pointless. It's rather amusing to see that homosexual activists themselves obviously regard their activities as socially crucial for enacting major change, but when someone on my side of the issue points out that they are actively enacting major change, you "nothing to see here" folks come along and imply that this is all just happening slowly, gradually, naturally, and inevitably, all by itself. Perhaps you should tell that to the activists: "Hey, guys, people can't avoid approving of you now, normalization and legal recognition is all just socially inevitable, so you can stop your efforts. It's all good."

What dishonesty.

You, however, Al, are certainly not worth debating on these issues.

Lydia, the reason you all are losing this is that your position is simply incoherent. What you seem to see as dishonesty is my merely pointing out a simple feedback loop. Its the way much social change happens. Attitudes change over time and at some point the actual position of the society is at such a variance with the laws that it becomes necessary to change the law. One part happens over time, one part requires sudden change. Lawrence changed the law in an instant but reflected societal changes over centuries. People have figured out that fairness and minding ones own business trump other, more frivolous considerations.

This gradual change sometimes happens because a person or small group of persons takes a stand. Conservatives aren't the only fellows standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'

If the activism that so bothers you wasn't striking a chord with most folks, you wouldn't be so unhappy and you wouldn't be losing. Meanwhile, because this is America, you are free to hold whatever attitudes you wish. You are free to express those attitudes and to seek to pass them on. You are even free to endlessly repeat, "they aren't married, really, they aren't!"

Homosexuality became normalized over time.

False statement. Homosexuality has not yet been fully "normalized." It will still take a little time before all of the laws have been deranged to the point where it is "normalized" before the law. Culture will take at a minimum 2 more generations before it is wholly "normalized" socially, since people don't change their stripes all that easily (look at racial bigotry). In order for me to cease putting "normalized" in quotes and just call it normalized, it would have to become normal as per human nature, and in God's eyes. That will take quite some additional time...like, forever plus 1 year?

It is also a false statement according to its intent: that the law is following the culture. Absolutely NOT. If it were true, then there would be solid wins for gay "marriage" in various states in state-wide elections. But that's not what's happening. The gay-liberal agenda-pushers are pushing their agenda through the courts, the least democratic of our legal institutions, because they keep losing in the ballot box. If law were following culture, they would not be relying on the courts.

"...woven into the warp and woof of society...", is the sort of language one falls back on when one hasn't a case.

This would only be stated by one who rejects that nature and custom both precede law and constrain it. Liberals want "right" to be decided by atomic individual self-will, and (after that) by explicit social consent. This denies that there is already a right built into human nature, and that society is, in addition to explicitly willed choices, a cornucopia of handed-down wealth.

And if there is in fact any win-lose in this matter, the "lose" is wholly in the internal mental life of the self-perceived "loser".

It's all in your head, buddy! Get over it! That's Al's prescription for the destruction of a fitting culture that respects God's design of human nature. It is impossible for a culture to celebrate fundamentally anti-human patterns of living and not bring about all sorts of other problems, including crime and psychological ill health. These social problems will impact me in my wallet, my ability to function in my job, and other ways - it is not just "in my head".

Lydia, there's no arguing with people who believe that words have no connection to reality and thus can be redefined at will. You're basically dealing with nominalism run amok, what Marion Montgomery refers to as the gnostic attempt to impose will on being.

Logic won't work.

I suppose so, NM. I'm tempted to use nursery language. Instead of "woven into the warp and woof of society" one could say

"Marriage is the kind of social and legal institution that comes up *a lot* in everybody's daily life and is not merely a private institution."

But no doubt Al would try to find some way either to disagree with that truism or to say that it doesn't matter to any point I could possibly be making--such as, for example, to the major nature of the societal change the homosexual activists are aiming for. When it suits him, he'll pretend anything. Perhaps we should ask them: Hey, guys, has "heteronormativity" been abolished, yet? Do you hope and believe that the instantiation of homosexual "marriage" will help to serve that purpose? One would think the answers to this are blatantly obvious to everyone on _both_ sides of the issue. But if someone on _our_ side even tries to use such self-evident sociological facts for any argumentative purpose whatsoever they are treated as controversial.

It's just not worth the time.

They aren't married, really, they aren't.

Frankly, any real libertarian, regardless of his beliefs about homosexuality, should be able to see this in a heartbeat.

Any libertarian worth his salt would argue for privatization of marriage. I'm not a libertarian and I'm not completely in favor in privatizing marriage, but, my fellow conservatives, privatization of marriage is the only viable position for us to take. We will lose the war over marriage (certainly not because the other side has better arguments - it has none); however, what we can do is to argue for the complete removal the term marriage out of legislation - something that gay activists don't want to happen. Anyone not ideologically constipated can see that this isn't about the legal benefits of civil marriage. Homosexuals don't care about marriage, which statistics show. The percentage of them that enter marriage is pathetically low, and it's lesbians who mostly enter marriage. This is about normalizing homosexual relationships and nothing more. Take away the right of the state to determine the nature of peoples' relationships and you stop the Gay Agenda in one swoop and have one instrument less with which the Left can impose its toxic ideology onto the masses.

Warning: I've got a cold today and I'm much more irritable than usual.

And now, when, "Sue!" or "Discrimination!" is in everybody's mind, divorce and remarriage are so widely accepted that it probably wouldn't occur to the coordinator to ask or to try to maintain that particular standard.

So, is it really a strong moral standard to begin with if he isn't willing to find out if it is being violated or try to maintain it? We've had this argument before, and your example based upon his deliberate ignorance or eventual acceptance (!) is not helpful in showing he has an unshakeable moral belief. The part about remarriage being widely accepted works against you, because the goal of activists of any stripe is to increase public acceptance. Phrased differently, they shouldn't be activists because it will change public opinion, and that will change individual standards, and those are supposed to be legally protected from change because (???).

In order for me to cease putting "normalized" in quotes and just call it normalized, it would have to become normal as per human nature, and in God's eyes.

God's eyes treated polygamy as normal, even though it is a near-constant refrain from traditionalists that gay marriage will lead to the unnatural acceptance of polygamy. Apparently it only takes a literal interpretation of "be fruitful and multiply" to normalize polygamy. There are many things the Old Testament God condoned or approved: slavery, genocide, ordering Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a test of faith, commanding the Jews make ritual animal sacrifices, and destroying all humankind except Noah’s family in a worldwide flood, which modern humans with our atomic self-will view as morally depraved. But we know God really loves humanity and if he went a bit overboard it was probably Adam's fault. I mean, who wouldn't think it is Justice to place all of humanity under the threat of eternal fiery torture because of one man's single act of disobedience?

It is impossible for a culture to celebrate fundamentally anti-human patterns of living and not bring about all sorts of other problems, including crime and psychological ill health. These social problems will impact me in my wallet, my ability to function in my job, and other ways - it is not just "in my head".

Despite the rhetoric about anti-human patterns, I should congratulate you on admitting to a testable theory. Now try to prove it - provide any valid statistical evidence that crime rates or psychological illnesses have increased in places that have allowed gay marriage.

The part about remarriage being widely accepted works against you, because the goal of activists of any stripe is to increase public acceptance.

Well, at least one person in this conversation admits that. Perhaps you and Al should duke it out on that proposition, Step2.

Apparently it only takes a literal interpretation of "be fruitful and multiply" to normalize polygamy. There are many things the Old Testament God condoned or approved: slavery, genocide, ordering Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a test of faith, commanding the Jews make ritual animal sacrifices, and destroying all humankind except Noah’s family in a worldwide flood, which modern humans with our atomic self-will view as morally depraved.

Of course, humans practiced things which we too would find wildly depraved if we witnessed a society practicing them as openly and flagrantly as the Bible says they were practiced in many cultures. Would you not take serious issue with a society that has normalized incest, beastiality, pederasty and other (arguably) far more extreme practices than mere grown-man-on-grown-man (or woman-on-woman) homosexuality? That is to say nothing of how pagan cultures often practiced forms of execution so cruel and barbaric that they made medieval torture look ACLU-compliant.

It is interesting to me that liberals don't even bother exploring the abject darkness of the human soul that history records. Perhaps it is willful blinders. You cannot read much of history and be a humanist. There is nothing about our history worthy of mercy and forgiveness by a higher power not beholden to our behaviors. On our own, we are a truly contemptible species.

God's eyes treated polygamy as normal

Nowhere in the Bible does God endorse polygamy.

Apparently it only takes a literal interpretation of "be fruitful and multiply" to normalize polygamy.

You aware that God said this to a monogamous couple?

Would you not take serious issue with a society that has normalized...(red herrings)?

Sure, but those are irrelevant to this topic.

It is interesting to me that liberals don't even bother exploring the abject darkness of the human soul that history records.

During most of history the human soul has been plagued by superstition and reinforcing tribal loyalty through terror. The only source of identity was as a member of the tribe. The Enlightenment attempted to transcend that, although it has had very mixed results in doing so.

You cannot read much of history and be a humanist.

I can't read much of history and believe anyone is a proud traditionalist. Human history isn't all bad of course, but there is hope that the future will be much better.

Nowhere in the Bible does God endorse polygamy.

Exodus 21:10
Deuteronomy 21:15-17

Given the blatant contradiction, I see two possible escape routes: 1) God's prophets were sincerely mistaken in what they heard which means their other claims could be mistaken as well. 2) God's prophets inserted a divine stamp of approval for traditional customs without receiving such approval.

Exodus 21:10 Deuteronomy 21:15-17

Excuse me? Nothing is here endorsed, at best tolerated for survival value. Do you want unmarried women to starve or either resort to prostitution?

Nothing is here endorsed, at best tolerated for survival value.

You shifted the goalposts so far they are in the next galaxy. This is the same God who Moses had to plead with to allow his own chosen people to continue living after they made a pagan idol. You really think this God would tolerate sexual sin for any reason, especially given its foundational support to all other claims about moral purity?

Do you want unmarried women to starve or either resort to prostitution?

You've created a false choice between starvation and prostitution. First, simple harlotry was condemned with the death penalty in ancient Israel. The only thing that even comes close is that an unmarried woman could be sold into slavery by her family, but if her master bedded her she was either freed from being a slave or she became his wife. Second, there is nothing at all to support your claim the Jewish community would let unmarried women starve to death. As far as I can tell it is a complete fabrication.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0003_0_02291.html

You really think this God would tolerate sexual sin for any reason

Yes he would when extreme circumstances demand a necessary evil to prevent a bigger calamity. You'd lie to protect the Jews hiding in the cellar knowing that lying is immoral. In this situation lying becomes a moral imperative because protection of innocent life takes precedence over lying.

You've created a false choice between starvation and prostitution.

Those were suggestions among other possibilities. To understand the emergence of polygamy one must put its practice in the context of that time. In Mohammad's time, for instance, there was a shortage of men which left a large group of unmarried women who were exposed to exploitation. It was also a solution for orphans and widows, who wouldn't be shielded by an official guardian in whose interest it would be that the window remains single, so that he can keep the deceased husband's inheritance. The situation of Israel wasn't significantly different.

there is nothing at all to support your claim the Jewish community would let unmarried women starve to death. As far as I can tell it is a complete fabrication.

The text to which you linked speaks mostly about the Talmudic period and onward. We're talking here about ancient Israel where there were no social institutions to relieve the burden of orphans and widows and where generally life was harsh, short, and brutish.

Yes he would when extreme circumstances demand a necessary evil to prevent a bigger calamity.

There was no exception made for extreme circumstances, it was an ordinary part of their laws that were declared by God's prophets, no different from the rest of their laws. Furthermore, the assertion that women who aren't married are a calamity that allows for necessary sexual sin goes against every argument in favor of celibacy.

To understand the emergence of polygamy one must put its practice in the context of that time.

If it emerges naturally due to certain circumstance, by definition it can't be unnatural. At worst it can only be described as inappropriate in a different context.

We're talking here about ancient Israel where there were no social institutions to relieve the burden of orphans and widows and where generally life was harsh, short, and brutish.

Still, there isn't even a hint in the Bible or elsewhere that starvation was a factor. Even if you insist that life during the exodus itself was harsh, short, and brutish, their destination was a land of milk and honey. Yet we know polygamy continued because of the eight wives of Kind David, one of the most revered persons in the Old Testament.

There was no exception made for extreme circumstances, it was an ordinary part of their laws that were declared by God's prophets, no different from the rest of their laws.

God doesn't endorse polygamy.

the assertion that women who aren't married are a calamity that allows for necessary sexual sin

Unmarried women aren't the calamity. Where are you getting this from? From me certainly not.

Even if you insist that life during the exodus itself was harsh, short, and brutish, their destination was a land of milk and honey.

You're giving a poetic expression instead of an analysis. Do you know anything about the living circumstances of the ancient Near East? Pestilence, desert weather, wars, slavery? This wasn't an easy place to live. And how much food can you produce with primitive agriculture?

Yet we know polygamy continued because of the eight wives of Kind David, one of the most revered persons in the Old Testament.

That some people do it doesn't mean God approves it.

Sure, but those are irrelevant to this topic.

To the contrary. They are relevant by virtue of you condemning God for taking a stance against those societies.

I can't read much of history and believe anyone is a proud traditionalist. Human history isn't all bad of course, but there is hope that the future will be much better.

Not really. One need only look at what technology is enabling us to do and the steady corruption of our civic culture to see that the future that awaits us is bleak. Levels of oppression that the Soviets and Nazis would never have tried will be possible. The steady expansion of data retention mandates coupled with deep packet inspection on a large scale gives us just a small taste of how profoundly pervasive the surveillance state of the future will be. That's not even counting what neuroscience will enable, among other things.

The American people alone put up with more abuse from their local governments than King George ever did to us, and it's getting far worse.

"Marriage is the kind of social and legal institution that comes up *a lot* in everybody's daily life and is not merely a private institution."

Which isn't what warp and woof implies and isn't necessarily true in any case. In fact, in daily life it comes up hardly at all except for one off or at best infrequent situations at which point humane and rational notions of what equal protection under the law means should inform us.

We grant others the right to discipline themselves and others within voluntarily adhered to dispensations of all kinds. It seems to me that implicit in that granting is the understanding that they will refrain from over-generalizing the application of the stories they tell themselves.

Perhaps the incoherence lies in an idiosyncratic view of what "acceptance" and "normalization" mean in a modern pluralistic society. I'm sure gay folk would consider their Western journey from being sawed asunder to now sufficient to normalization and would be happy with an "acceptance" that granted them their rights as citizens and otherwise left them alone. Those invoking a god in these matters are referred to the paragraph above.

"Well, at least one person in this conversation admits that. Perhaps you and Al should duke it out on that proposition, Step2.

Tony, I believe, mentioned racism. At the time of Perez and even at Loving a majority, when polled, disapproved of interracial marriage. Likewise the provisions of other laws and rulings on these matters. What happened? Folks accepted things rather quickly because they intuitively recognized that, at best, they were wrong or, at a minimum, they were looking petty and foolish and didn't really care all that much. In 1964 it was perfectly acceptable to parade around certain sections of this country wearing a sheet; not so much any more.

Lydia, where did I ever indicate that I considered marriage a private thing? The major reason I changed my mind was taking a moment to reflect on the basic fairness of things. That folks facing similar situations are treated in a similar manner before the law is, and always will be, dispositive for me. One can have private opinions at variance with public actions. That is basic to civil society.

"Do you know anything about the living circumstances of the ancient Near East? Pestilence, desert weather, wars, slavery? This wasn't an easy place to live."

Which might be a good reason to take less than literally the just so stories they evolved to deal with all that.

"And how much food can you produce with primitive agriculture?"

Just enough, sadly. Just enough.

These for/against homosexual marriages debates are so going to be irrelevant in about a decade or two. When the cause of homosexuality is discovered and when biotechnology become sufficiently advanced there are two possible scenarios:

1) If the cause is genetic, there will be screening of embryos and fetuses with "gay genes", leading to many eugenics abortions. Many people will want grandchildren. Now, many gay marriage advocates are also pro-choice advocates, which means that there is nothing immoral or unjustified in aborting a embryo/fetus if that embryo/fetus will be become gay or lesbian if the pro-choice position is valid. Woman have the right to decide what to do with their bodies as they say.

2) If the cause has something do with instability in the uterus or with sex hormones, a potentially homosexual embryo/fetus will with certainty become heterosexual with the advanced technology of bioengineering. This will be done discreetly in private clinics.

In any case, homosexuality will drop, and the rate of homosexuals will be so low that they'll be unable to have any political leverage anymore.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/08/gay-gene-eugenics

To the contrary. They are relevant by virtue of you condemning God for taking a stance against those societies.

They are still irrelevant. Taking a stance against them, even a warlike stance, doesn't require slavery, genocide or any other depravity.

Levels of oppression that the Soviets and Nazis would never have tried will be possible.

I have to grant that the Democrats have been pathetic in regard to civil liberties, but compared to the Republicans they aren't as openly hostile. Republicans would reduce the Bill of Rights to about three. What most conservatives (and corrupt Democrats) seem to believe is that it is acceptable to violate the civil liberties of The Other because it will never be used against me as a faithful member of the tribe. That is a false view of civil rights and it only empowers the Orwellian surveillance/eternal war state.

Where are you getting this from? From me certainly not.

...when extreme circumstances demand a necessary evil to prevent a bigger calamity.
...a shortage of men which left a large group of unmarried women who were exposed to exploitation.

Combining the two reads as: "Polygamy is a necessary evil caused by the extreme circumstances of a shortage of men that prevents the calamity of a large group of unmarried women." Since I contested your assertion they were exposed to exploitation, I am not going to concede that point as a given condition.

Pestilence, desert weather, wars, slavery? This wasn't an easy place to live.

Land of milk and honey may be a poetic phrase, but it is also the phrase God used to describe the Promised Land. Let me guess what comes next, you deduce that the mansions in heaven are simply a poetic description so they are actually a bunch of dilapidated shacks beside a frozen lake.

In any case, homosexuality will drop, and the rate of homosexuals will be so low that they'll be unable to have any political leverage anymore.

Since you believe this all about political leverage, perhaps along with sexual orientation they will find the genetic or biochemical root of political orientation and then you can create conservatopia, which will probably consist of dilapidated shacks beside a frozen lake.

"create conservatopia"

To match the already existing libertarian one,

http://dailybail.com/home/somalia-libertarian-paradise-vacation.html

Actually, I would be perfectly fine with removing all non-discrimination laws for _at least_ expressive activity such as photography[...]

Lydia, I specified that it was a yes-no question (also known as a polar question) because I had a feeling you would choose not to answer it.

The question you seem to be pretending to answer here was:

If a photographer or caterer were forced by the state to use their talents for an interfaith marriage, or a marriage with a 20-year age difference, or a Christian marriage, would it be reasonable under any circumstances to use that example to argue that the law should prevent interfaith marriages, or marriages with an age difference, or Christian marriages?

The most important part was: Would it be reasonable under any circumstances to use those examples to argue that the law should prevent those specific types of marriages?

Combining the two reads

Explaining how your failure of reading comprehension came to be doesn't have anything to do with me. The exploitation of women is the calamity, and it's clear from the post.

Since I contested your assertion they were exposed to exploitation

In a parallel universe maybe. Even without exploitation there's famine, infertility, and inheritance.

Land of milk and honey may be a poetic phrase, but it is also the phrase God used to describe the Promised Land.

And? When God uses it it's less poetical? He definitely didn't talk about a place of unmitigated pampering. "By the sweat of your brow" and such.

Explaining how your failure of reading comprehension came to be doesn't have anything to do with me. The exploitation of women is the calamity, and it's clear from the post.

This lesson comes from the person who thinks "land of milk and honey" is a reference for pestilence, desert weather, slavery and wars. Then you contradict yourself again and say polygamy doesn't even require exploitation - that famine, infertility, inheritance and perhaps merely working up a sweat can justify it (multiple wives are needed to wipe a man's brow I guess). You should just admit that no matter how frequently it was practiced by the ancient Israelis during both times of plenty and scarcity, or how weak the excuse you can imagine to justify the practice, you will deny that God approved the practice.

We grant others the right to discipline themselves and others within voluntarily adhered to dispensations of all kinds.

Good ol' Al, ignoring the blindingly obvious. Society doesn't GRANT to parents the right to discipline their kids, parents have that right regardless of whether society likes it or not. What society does is recognize that prior right.

and [gays] would be happy with an "acceptance" that granted them their rights as citizens and otherwise left them alone.

Ha ha, yes of course - their rights as citizens. Naturally. Like the right to raise kids. Of course, for gays, that means the right to raise some kids that were procreated by OTHER people, not their own kids. But of course, that can't happen NATURALLY, now can it? So, unlike natural parents, society really does have to GRANT to gays the right to adopt kids and raise them (and discipline them) if they are going to do it. So, no matter what else we say about it, this is fundamentally not a parallel right that is held the same way that natural parents have to raise their kids.

In fact, in daily life it [marriage] comes up hardly at all except for one off or at best infrequent situations at which point humane and rational notions of what equal protection under the law means should inform us.

What utter balderdash, Al. One of your worst ever silly statements. The meaning of marriage comes up a thousand times a day in a family, because the relationship of parents to children is a MARRIAGE-based situation, not a society-granted arrangement. Even aside from kids, the rights, duties, obligations, and privileges of marriage are tied into a thousand ways we act throughout a month of living: property shared, going to a doctor (health insurance from an employer covering spouse and kids), one spouse leaving for work while the other brings the kid to day-care, the marital bed shared, etc. If we were to not recognize marriage as as its own distinct category of agreement, it would take pages and pages of individually listed rights and duties to create a contract that covered what we mean in total by marriage. That list would read like the fabric of everyday life.

If we were to not recognize marriage as as its own distinct category of agreement, it would take pages and pages of individually listed rights and duties to create a contract that covered what we mean in total by marriage.

Some people make the argument that same-sex couples who can't get legally married can just get a lawyer and contract for those rights, and thus same-sex couples aren't really missing out on rights that are afforded to heterosexual couples.

It sounds like you agree with me that such an argument is specious.

Phil, marriage isn't just a contract with certain rights and privileges. It is also a gift of one's whole self, including one's fertility, for the possibility of procreating children. Homosexuals cannot do that by each other. They could establish a contract that spelled out an agreed exchange of rights and privileges to and for each other, and as long as that contract didn't involve the right to sex, it might be a reasonable contract. They can't, however, "contract with" each other that THIRD PARTIES outside the agreement, like one person's employer, would chip in with health coverage or pension rights for the second person in the contract. It takes the state to force such meaning into a contract between homosexuals, and the state can only do so by ignoring the reasons marriage privileges were established to begin with.

"Phil, marriage isn't just a contract with certain rights and privileges."

Tony, check out the family law in your state. Most likely it explicitly states that marriage is a contract. As I pointed out above, you are free in our nation to believe that marriage is also something additional and as long as you do no violence to public policy you are free to voluntarily practice those beliefs within one dispensation or another including one of your own creation.

As Phil has pointed out above, your comments actually make the equal protection argument. Like it or not gays can form relationships and, like it or not, those relationships will often involve children, property, and health issues. There exists a body of well developed law that deals with those matters. Denying gays access to that body of law isn't justified on even a rational basis hence we need to give them equal access to that body of law.

The advantages of being a parent or spouse cannot be duplicated through a contract or will. Fairness demands access.

"Good ol' Al, ignoring the blindingly obvious. Society doesn't GRANT to parents the right to discipline their kids, parents have that right regardless of whether society likes it or not. What society does is recognize that prior right."

Actually it does. Society through its laws sets the bounds and it always has. Roman law allowed the the father rather extreme (from our pov) powers within the family as did Jewish law. We have, perhaps unwisely :), abandoned those habits.

Tony, it sounds like you do, in fact, agree with me that the argument I pointed out is specious, but that you hold other views about marriage and same-sex marriage.

Just because you agree with a person that a particular argument is bad doesn't mean that you therefore come to the same political conclusions as that person.

Actually it does. Society through its laws sets the bounds and it always has. Roman law allowed the the father rather extreme (from our pov) powers within the family as did Jewish law. We have, perhaps unwisely :), abandoned those habits.

Al, you are confusing, apparently intentionally, two different aspects of reality. On the one hand, marriage is an ontological reality that existed in human relationships before the state existed. Indeed, it existed before society (in the sense of an arrangement of many individuals with varying sets of rights and duties) came into being. Society eventually crafted many customs that surrounded marriage, but society didn't invent the reality that the customs touched upon. That the relationship of marriage includes within its nature a mutual agreement of shared rights and privileges is the basis upon which the state, later still, was able to refer to marriage as a "contract".

Unlike the game of baseball, which is inherently a social construct made at man's will and pleasure, marriage is not a social construct even though society has constructed a wealth of custom that frames marriage within a set of limitations. That framework involves many, many individual customs that ARE made at man's will and pleasure, and so man may change them for good reason. But the framework overlays a reality that is deeper than any given society's practices, and so man and society do not have the capacity to change that deeper reality at will and pleasure.

When the state makes laws that touch on marriage, the state may be making laws that rearrange those social customs that are simply man-made. Such laws can be within the state's authority. However, when the state attempts to make laws that rearrange the underlying reality of marriage that is deeper than society and its reach, attempting to prescribe an arrangement that defies the ontological meaning of human nature and its God given form, the state is making "law" where it has no authority. The state isn't the arbiter of human nature. Those states in the recent past (Soviet Russia) that thought they could re-make man at will found themselves in error both physically and morally.

Tony, check out the family law in your state. Most likely it explicitly states that marriage is a contract. As I pointed out above, you are free in our nation to believe that marriage is also something additional and as long as you do no violence to public policy you are free to voluntarily practice those beliefs within one dispensation or another including one of your own creation.

Denying gays access to that body of law isn't justified on even a rational basis hence we need to give them equal access to that body of law.

So, in those place where the written constitutional law prohibits gay marriage, this is "denying them access" because there is some principle deeper than the written law that requires them to get something that law does not permit, but when written law eventually is re-written to permit gay 'marriage', those who are opposed are required to shut up about it and live with it because "that's the law." Law, and changing it, is thus a "heads I win, tails you lose" system of liberals getting whatever they want.

As usual, Al, you are confusing the notion of that which the state can and does enforce with the notion of right, valid, true. The state can enforce worshiping statues or Caesar, but that doesn't mean that the state was in the right moral order in so writing law to force this. And when the state was enforcing such written laws, the laws were indeed laws on paper but they had no binding force on man as a moral authority: any man that chose to refuse the morally defective act of worshiping a statue was RIGHT even though he was in defiance of the written law. We speak of such a so-called law as not a real law, because although it was in fact written down by the authorities, they had no authority to write such a law and thus in moral terms it was no law at all.

Likewise, the state may write a law that forces a man to treat 2 gays' relationship as marriage, and the state may enforce such a law. But since the state exceeds its authority in attempting to make such a law, it has no binding force and it is no law. What it really is, then, is violence or coercion to force men to do something contrary to the moral law. And just as Caesar found that attempting to force Christians to worship idols was a meal bigger than he was capable of digesting, it could turn out that way for gay 'marriage' law.

"those who are opposed are required to shut up about it and live with it because 'that's the law.'"

No, folks are still free to speak their minds. You are equating the very real and material consequences of gay folks being denied equal access to the law with you not getting your way. What actual, real, material injury do you suffer?

We have been over it 1000 times already, Al. Is there a reason you didn't hear it the first 1000 times? Let's try just ONE of them: as an employer, I made a contract with my employees. That contract stated that I would provide pension benefits, and that the benefit included spouses as survivor beneficiaries. That contract had a distinct meaning, with calculable costs. The meaning was knowable in terms of what ALL of society meant by marriage, which was a kind of union impossible to 2 people of the same sex. When I made the contract, I figured the costs, and it was worth it to me (and presumably it was worth it to the employees too). Now the state comes along and tries to re-define marriage so that the contract's clear and known meaning is no longer what it meant when I agreed to it, and its known, calculated costs are no longer applicable: it turns out that I have made a contract that costs me too much for what I am getting out of it. I am forced to lay off the 5% least productive employees because otherwise I will not only make no profit at all, I will start losing money. So, the state's action changes my contract without my consent, eradicates my profit margin, and loses 2 people their jobs.

Do us all a favor, Al, and don't even respond to this.

Once again we seem to be playing calvinball. I asked you for actual harms to yourself and you respond with a hypothetical and imaginary employees. That you can't come up with real harms is perhaps why the courts can't find a rational basis and why public opinion is so rapidly changing.

Your example does raise some questions. I believe pension benefits are normally a function of length of service, earnings, and age at retirement. Ones marital status normally doesn't enter into that amount. If there is a survivor benefit it is exercised by the employee upon retirement and results in a lower payout. At least that's the way I've always seen it done.

Also, why would a firm with only 40 employees pay pensions out of current earnings instead of buying an annuity?

That contract had a distinct meaning, with calculable costs. The meaning was knowable in terms of what ALL of society meant by marriage, which was a kind of union impossible to 2 people of the same sex. When I made the contract, I figured the costs, and it was worth it to me (and presumably it was worth it to the employees too).

Are you saying, Tony, that as an employer, you made a contract assuming that a certain subset of your employees would never get married? How would that work, Tony? Since adult men and women in this country have the legal right to get married to someone of the opposite sex, the only way that you could calculate costs is if you intentionally hired a not-insignificant number of people that you knew were gay and made the assumption that they could never get married. Hiring single people wouldn't allow you to calculate costs, because any single person could choose to get married. On what basis are you able to calculate costs under this scenario?

In my state, it is illegal to make hiring decisions based on marital status, so I don't believe it would be possible to make the kind of calculation that you are hypothesizing.

Do you agree that your example was flawed?

"Let's try just ONE of them:"

That one having been thoroughly shot down and no personal harms demonstrated, do you have another or will you finally admit that there are no material reasons to ban same sex marriage?

Y'all are a complete waste of time. I gave a whole grocery list of harms up-thread, but what has always emerged with you chaps is that you *jolly well don't care*. This is hardly the same thing as saying that no one will be in any way harmed. If a social conservative businessman is forced on pain of lawsuit to extend healthcare benefits to the same-sex partners of his employees, and that costs him, yes, money that *in fact* he wouldn't have had to pay out otherwise and also goes against his conscience as amounting to his acquiescing in what he considers the moral and metaphysical abomination of the claim that these two are married, that's harm in my book. It isn't in yours, because you *don't care*. If a socially conservative public school teacher loses her job because she won't refer to little Sally's bio-mother's lesbian lover as "your other mommy" and, in speaking to Sally's bio-mother, as "your wife," that's harm in my book. After all, the teacher is out of a job. It's not harm in your book, because you *don't care*. I mean, we get it, but what more is there to say? It's not like our side can't present plenty of examples. It's that it's a waste of time to present them to you, because you *don't care*.

Phil, there are perfectly good statistics on it (marriage numbers), and with those statistics, the probabilities can be computed just fine: pension practitioners do it every day - they have to by law. But when you change the definitions, the previous statistics are useless - as is the previous meaning of the contract. (Health insurance companies do it all the time for employer-paid health insurance, too. You don't think they just guess at how many employees are married (or will be married next year) do you? The employer cannot tell the insurance co, because the employer cannot ask.)

That one having been thoroughly shot down

(to be said in a bluff hearty voice hoping nobody will notice that what Phil said doesn't prove lack of harm in this act of undermining contract law, it merely claims the harm is not precisely calculable. It is silly to conclude no harm occurs because the harm is not computed precisely. Tell that to every court in the world that awards penalties for "pain and suffering.") Al, your mantra "no material harm" is false, tiresome, and not entirely sane, frankly. Why don't you at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that you think the harm involved is reasonable to demand, as a theoretical "cost of producing a better society"? That at least is a debatable proposition. That there is no harm at all is not, it is just goofy.

Society eventually crafted many customs that surrounded marriage, but society didn't invent the reality that the customs touched upon.

Using your baseball example, it would not take too many rule changes before baseball purists would balk at how different it was, that it no longer carried the essential elements of the sport of baseball. Their arguments would look very similar to those seen here: that baseball is its own unique game with a special tradition and privilege over other games, that sufficiently changing the rules will irrevocably corrupt the sport, that it is an act of deception and/or coercion to force people to treat it like baseball when it is obviously different. So what this example shows is that idealism, full stop, resists change - even for something we agree is entirely a social construct.

The state isn't the arbiter of human nature.

So if you accepted the liberal viewpoint that same-sex attraction is natural for a minority of humans, you should reach the opposite political conclusion. Liberals don't want homosexuals to act against their nature and we don't think the state should prevent their committed relationship from being recognized as such.

We speak of such a so-called law as not a real law, because although it was in fact written down by the authorities, they had no authority to write such a law and thus in moral terms it was no law at all.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but I recall that you are the person who defended many of the officers at Ruby Ridge and are generally a very pro-police and pro-prosecutor "law and order" type of conservative. You don't seem to have much of a problem with coercion as long as it is used against others. That doesn’t mean turnabout is right of course, it only means I’m going to take your nullification claims with a grain of salt.

Why don't you at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that you think the harm involved is reasonable to demand, as a theoretical "cost of producing a better society"?

It is reasonable to demand, since the vast majority of the "harm" is where Lydia has placed it, in the mind of the person who is offended. Would the hypothetical traditional Catholic photographer be justified in refusing to call Rush Limbaugh's fourth marriage partner his wife? According to what you are saying, anybody who has a moral objection and interacts with her is justified in not only refusing to call her his wife while muttering about the abomination of adultery, but also refusing to provide her any of the legal benefits that come from being married. I am confident that if someone were to actually try this, it would take about three seconds for them to get fired by their employer. Yet when it is gay marriage everything is supposed to be different. People can't violate their conscience when it comes to recognizing another couple's legal relationship, oh no, that would be an attack against the very fabric of society.

"Phil, there are perfectly good statistics on it (marriage numbers), and with those statistics, the probabilities can be computed just fine..."

Tony, I have always assumed that opting for the survivorship benefit reduces the amount to the beneficiary and doesn't raise the cost to the employer. You now seem to be saying that the owner of the 40 employee business is going to do the prudent thing and buy an annuity from an insurance company. But if that is the case there would be no unexpected extra cost due to the law of large numbers (would anyone even try to apply those statistics to a number as small as 40). Sorry, you still gave us a bogus example.

"Why don't you at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that you think the harm involved is reasonable to demand, as a theoretical "cost of producing a better society"? That at least is a debatable proposition."

Sorry Lydia and Tony but redefining a "cost of doing business" as "harm" based on the highly refined moral sensibilities of a handful of zealots won't wash. Employers offer health insurance for the benefits to the company in attracting and keeping top help. With the new healthcare law employers over a certain size have to offer it. This actually renders your point somewhat moot as small firms will benefit from the exchanges and community rating. Anyway what you are really arguing against is our inefficient and uncompetitive tradition of tying access to healthcare to employment. One way or another we all pay for the uninsured.

Tony, Lydia. does every regulation concerning employment that raises costs constitute "harm"?

"he wouldn't have had to pay out otherwise and also goes against his conscience as amounting to his acquiescing in what he considers the moral and metaphysical abomination of the claim that these two are married."

I guess that's one way of looking at it; good old conservative, shut-up-and-be-glad-you-have-a-job greed coupled with an unhealthy interest in the personal lives of his employees. Or he could realize that fairness and respect goes a long way towards keeping productivity up.

"It is reasonable to demand, since the vast majority of the "harm" is where Lydia has placed it, in the mind of the person who is offended."

I have to note that we have gone from "Oh-noes-Western-Civilization-will-end-dogs-and-cats-together-alligators-gonna-run-around-on-their-hind-legs-we're-all-going-to-die" to some hypothetical businessman with his nose out of joint at having some marginal cost increased.

Still Tony and Lydia you may still be right, look at what the repeal of DADT has done to our military, oh wait,

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/dadt_repeal_is_working_as_plan033750.php

Y'all are a complete waste of time. I gave a whole grocery list of harms up-thread, but what has always emerged with you chaps is that you *jolly well don't care*.

Lydia, you lost a lot of credibility because you kept insisting (and apparently, you continue to insist) that we must consider harms that do not actually stem directly from same-sex marriage.

Here's the question that I asked upthread that you still haven't answered, Lydia:

If a photographer or caterer were forced by the state to use their talents for an interfaith marriage, or a marriage with a 20-year age difference, or a Christian marriage, would it be reasonable under any circumstances to use that example to argue that the law should prevent interfaith marriages, or marriages with an age difference, or Christian marriages?

Remember, it's a polar question; that is, a question which requires a yes or no answer.

This is hardly the same thing as saying that no one will be in any way harmed.

Are you going to continue insisting that harms that can (and will) happen whether or not same-sex marriage is legal are harms that stem from legal same-sex marriage?

You keep insisting that we need to tally up harms that are already the status quo. Your children may witness a gay couple on television. A gay couple may move in next door to you. You might get an invitation to a gay wedding (if you have especially forgiving friends, at least). A teacher may be fired for telling a student that his/her parents are not married.

That is the status quo, Lydia. Those harms do not stem from same-sex marriages, and that fact can be objectively demonstrated.

Phil, there are perfectly good statistics on it (marriage numbers), and with those statistics, the probabilities can be computed just fine: pension practitioners do it every day

So, Tony, you weren't talking about direct harm to a specific business, but rather a change in the hypothetical way that economists apply algorithms to calculate how many employees are likely to get married in the future.

If you are willing to acknowledge that any large-scale campaign by Christian churches to discourage cohabitation and encourage young couples to marry is likely to cause more harm to business than legalizing same-sex marriage, I would consider acknowledging that what you have brought up is a potential harm.

But if you aren't willing to acknowledge that encourage single heterosexuals to marry (instead of shacking up) is as harmful as legalizing same-sex marriage, then let's call your example what it really was: a red herring which enumerated a theoretical but statistically insignificant threat.

Additionally, you're predicting that an increase in legal same-sex marriages will lead to an increase in health insurance costs for employers--you have acknowledged that you aren't talking about calculations that are made by individual employers. I don't believe that there is evidence to back that up; it is also possible that legal same-sex marriage will lead to improved health outcomes for the individuals getting married, leading to a potential decrease in insurance costs.

Blah, blah, Phil. And you don't want to admit the *far higher* probability that any of these things will happen if homosexual unions are called "marriage." If you seriously think that employers are just as likely to be sued for not giving same-sex partner benefits in a state that doesn't recognize homosexual unions as "marriages" as in a state that does, then you're not as smart as you think you are. And that's just one example among many. Such lawsuits are not the status quo. In fact, in my state, we have a state amendment _forbidding_ the state from treating anything other than the union of one man and one woman as marriage, which has a protective effect on employers. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it would protect a teacher in a public school in the scenario I described, as well, since her firing would be performed by a state entity.

Lydia,

Those are strong words from someone who has repeatedly avoided answering a simple yes-or-no question.

Tony, I have always assumed that opting for the survivorship benefit reduces the amount to the beneficiary and doesn't raise the cost to the employer.

Al, that's not how pension plans operate. Spousal pensions cost employers extra money. Employers hire pension actuaries to figure out those costs.

Sorry Lydia and Tony but redefining a "cost of doing business"

So, it really is a new cost. That much you admit. Whether it is "harm" or not depends on perspective, but the employer's perspective, when his profits are reduced by exactly that new cost, is a valid concrete way of looking at it: he suffers the loss of income. That's measurable harm. If you want to redefine it as a new "cost of doing business", you are just saying that the harm it does the businessman is worth it for other benefits throughout society.

Tony, Lydia. does every regulation concerning employment that raises costs constitute "harm"?

By definition, to the business the loss of income is, itself, a harm. Until you can establish that the benefits accruing to the business itself (long way around through the social benefits of the regulation) outweigh those concrete costs, then YES, it constitutes a harm as such to the business. Socially, we may make a decision that the social benefits - taking the loss to the business together with the gain to others - is an overall improvement in the common welfare, but that result doesn't mean the business hasn't suffered harm. Rather, it has suffered harm, for the sake of the betterment of the community.

The problem here, Al, is that according to you there is no reality of marriage other than what the law says, so there is no fundamental RIGHT of anyone to the statutorily ensconced privileges of marriage - it's all just a matter of positive law, whatever the law permits is all there is to the practice - and so in trying to measure the "benefits" to society of allowing gay 'marriage' there is virtually nothing to point at to claim as an 'improvement' to society: in a country where the underlying constitution says "there is no such thing as gar marriage" there would, REALLY, be no improvement that you could claim. And, likewise, if our country passed a national constitutional amendment saying that.

If, on the other hand, there is something more deeply there that the statutory privileges merely reflect, then that something deeper has its own nature separate from what the law says about it and the law cannot simply make it up however it pleases.

You can't have it both ways. Either marriage is simply a creature of the law, in which case there can't really BE a reason to change the law, or marriage is something more than that, in which case there is a reality that needs to be grasped before you can know whether changing the law is appropriate. The pro gay 'marriage' group refuse to even attempt (or allow) a discussion of that deeper issue.

So, Tony, you weren't talking about direct harm to a specific business, but rather a change in the hypothetical way that economists apply algorithms to calculate how many employees are likely to get married in the future.

No, Phil, not. Each business that has a pension plan has to pay contributions for the measurable long-term liabilities for that specific plan. Those measurable liabilities take into account joint and survivor pension costs as determined by the plan's actuary for that specific plan's situation, using standard actuarial principles but applying those principles with criteria that are reasonable for the plan itself.

Additionally, you're predicting that an increase in legal same-sex marriages will lead to an increase in health insurance costs for employers--you have acknowledged that you aren't talking about calculations that are made by individual employers. I don't believe that there is evidence to back that up; it is also possible that legal same-sex marriage will lead to improved health outcomes for the individuals getting married, leading to a potential decrease in insurance costs.

Folks, here is a classic example of a sloppy bit of thinking. Phil says "you have acknowledged", but what he actually means is that "I have attempted to deduce this from what you seem to have said, using my pretty limited understanding of pension practice and health care practice." No, Phil, that is NOT the same as my acknowledging what you thought, you got it exactly wrong.

For a health insurance carrier, the costs associated with a single individual who is not married may well be a bit higher than those for a similarly situated person who is married. But the costs for a single person who is not married are MUCH lower than costs for two people together.

Tony, you acknowledged that

The employer cannot tell the insurance co, because the employer cannot ask.

You've acknowledged that a) employers are not making individual calculations, because they cannot ask their employees about their marital status anyway, and b) you are talking about insurance companies which make decisions, and not individual employers.

Throwing in an ad hominem attacking and asserting that I "got it wrong" doesn't actually refute the fact that you acknowledged what you did, in fact, acknowledge.

Here's a yes-or-no question for you, Tony. Would a successful campaign by Christian churches to encourage people to marry be more harmful to businesses than legalizing same-sex marriages?

You ignored that part of my post. If you continue to ignore it, it will be clear that this is all just a red herring for you.

This lesson comes from the person who thinks "land of milk and honey" is a reference for pestilence, desert weather, slavery and wars.

Wrong, sir, again. “The land of milk and honey” is fertile land for Israelites to till and plow. Nothing more. What they’re going to do with it and in what troubles they’re going to bring themselves is their doing.

Then you contradict yourself again and say polygamy doesn't even require exploitation - that famine, infertility, inheritance and perhaps merely working up a sweat can justify it (multiple wives are needed to wipe a man's brow I guess).

You desperately search for a crack to dig in, and you still have problem with basic reading comprehension. Give up.

You should just admit that no matter how frequently it was practiced by the ancient Israelis during both times of plenty and scarcity, or how weak the excuse you can imagine to justify the practice, you will deny that God approved the practice.

You admit that you can't show God's endorsement of polygamy, so you resort to pointless talk about the exact meaning of phrases, what I did say and didn’t say. You’re a bad loser.

You admit that you can't show God's endorsement of polygamy...

I admit no such thing. Your mendacity is only surpassed by your level of denial.

Here's a yes-or-no question for you, Tony. Would a successful campaign by Christian churches to encourage people to marry be more harmful to businesses than legalizing same-sex marriages?

You ignored that part of my post. If you continue to ignore it, it will be clear that this is all just a red herring for you.

Stop being lame, Phil. In a blog, a person is not "required" to respond to you point by point in order to be engaged in your argument. If you haven't figured that out, well, now you know.

But I will answer your question, just to surprise you. :-) If by "encourage people to marry" you mean encouraging people to marry who otherwise would not (or probably would not) marry, then the obvious answer is YES, this would at the surface level cost employers more money due to spousal coverage. If churches encourage people to turn the marriages they already contemplate into something more holy and more attuned to human perfection, then this might not cost the employer more.

It is also possible, when you dig deeper, that it would reduce other costs that would offset the initial cost, either in whole or in part. I know I don't have numbers on that, so it is only possible so far as I know.

In case you didn't notice, Christian churches "encouraging" people to marry is a different sort of action than action by the state, and distinct from changing the meaning of the terms of contracts.

By the way, I am not actually sure that an employer cannot ask whether an employer is married, I borrowed that concept from a prior comment by someone else. Now that I think about it more, I suspect it is wrong. The employer cannot make hiring and promotion decisions based on marital status. It CAN ask about marital status for other purposes.

Stop being lame, Phil. In a blog, a person is not "required" to respond to you point by point in order to be engaged in your argument.

Obviously, Tony. That's why I restated it, so you'd know that the question was important to me, to understand what you wrote.

If by "encourage people to marry" you mean encouraging people to marry who otherwise would not (or probably would not) marry, then the obvious answer is YES, this would at the surface level cost employers more money due to spousal coverage.

That is a logical answer, based on your previous contention that an increase in marriages equals a net harm to employers.

It is also possible, when you dig deeper, that it would reduce other costs that would offset the initial cost, either in whole or in part. I know I don't have numbers on that, so it is only possible so far as I know.

Ah, so what you are saying is that a person (such as you) claiming that an increase in marriages equals a net harm to employers might be incorrect.

I'm aware that a campaign to encourage behavior is very different from a voluntary persuasive campaign. But I think it puts your previous argument into perspective, since I think we can now agree that the HORRIFIC FINANCIAL HARM that will be suffered by employers if SSM is legal is actually not different from the HORRIFIC FINANCIAL HARM that employers will suffer if Christian churches encourage unmarried couples to get married.

It illustrates that even you understand that the harm you have hypothesized is not a very big deal, and that in fact, it is possible, if you dig deeper, that the harm you have cited might actually be offset by other costs.

"Al, that's not how pension plans operate. Spousal pensions cost employers extra money. Employers hire pension actuaries to figure out those costs."

Tony, my understanding is that J&S annuities pay somewhat less than an annuity that expires with the death of the holder and that would seem to offset the extended payout. I believe military pensions deduct for back end J&S protection which is, in effect, a deduction. Besides the curious notion that requiring fairness for all constitutes a real, as opposed to a subjective, harm, your hypo leaves questions as to materiality. Are there hard numbers on this?

Tony, my understanding is that J&S annuities pay somewhat less than an annuity that expires with the death of the holder and that would seem to offset the extended payout.

A plan's joint & survivor option cannot pay less than the amount that is the actuarial equivalent value for the single-life option. But it can pay more. A good number of plans subsidize the J&S annuity option so that it pays more.

Besides the curious notion that requiring fairness for all constitutes a real,

Changing contracts by fiat without need is "fair"? Not to me. But even if it were, somehow, what is thus "good" for society as a whole can still be a detriment the individual employer. Just like raising his tax rate from 25% to 28% is reasonably called a harm to the individual that suffers the increased tax burden. The measure of the amount of harm is a separate matter from noting that there is harm. And no, I don't have any data on that. Nobody has any hard data, because the numbers of gays, and the numbers of marriage-inclined gays, is decidedly unknown in a society that until 15 years ago made sodomy a crime. Besides the fact that that the category of "gay" is not well-defined.