After almost six years of living under the worst president in U.S. history, and facing, on a daily basis, the ignorance and bigotry that arises in part from the pact that Republicans have made with the religious right, it is easy to blame all our ills on the excuses for leaders who run this country.
However, I’m reminded today that disgusting retrograde policies are not solely the domain of the Republicans. As reported in The Washington Post;
The federal government has refused to pay death benefits to the spouse of former congressman Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.), the first openly gay member of Congress.
Studds married Dean Hara in 2004 after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. But Hara will not be eligible to receive any portion of Studds’s estimated $114,337 annual pension …
And why won’t this man’s life partner be able to receive benefits?
because the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act bars the federal government from recognizing Studds’s marriage.
[...]
Under federal law, pensions can be denied only to lawmakers’ same-sex partners and to people convicted of espionage or treason, Graves said.
That’s right - thanks to the Clinton administration, this basic right of partnership can be denied only if the person involved is a spy, a traitor or, that equally heinous threat to the American way of life, gay!
So if I interpret this correctly, a member of Congress could be shot dead by police while stabbing a baby, and his opposite-sex partner would be eligible for the pension, but if he dies while on a quiet walk, his same sex partner isn’t eligible. Ain’t it great?
It should make us all sick.
Let’s not forget the role the Republican-dominated Congress played in passing this legislation in 1996. The Executive branch does not make the law in this country (though they can certainly alter it through changes in funding and enforcement on the “benign” end or signing statements on the less benign end). Blaming Clinton for this doesn’t solve the problem.
Actually, I’m relieved that we have not yet destroyed the social, political, and cultural meaning of traditional marriage, one of the pillars of modern western democracy.
Doug Kelley, you are quite right about the role the Republicans played, but Clinton signed it into law. Blaming him doesn’t solve the problem (quite obviously), but I didn’t point it out to solve the problem, I pointed it out to make a point about how the Democrats also fail to protect civil rights on occasion and we should hold them accountable for it.
Stan. I am happily married and two other people of the same gender wanting to commit to one another and spend their lives caring for each other doesn’t threaten that at all.
The Defense of Marriage Act 1996 passed the Senate 85-14, and 342-67 in the House of Representatives. Vetoing a veto-proof bill is not living in the Reality-Based Community.
Moreover, there are 39 states with DOMA-like provisions. That is enough, I think, to pass a Constitutional amendment. I’m sorry, but civil liberties can’t survive Constitutional amendment. Fact is, the country is not ready for it. The ultimate guarantors of a liberty are the people, and the people weren’t willing to grant it.
Yes, it is depressing to live in the reality-based community.
The whole source of this problem is the government’s involvement in marriage at all. The congressman should be able to will his pension to anyone he desires under freedom of contract. If he wanted to leave his pension to his 4 wives, husband, the SPCA, whoever or whatever, he should be free to do so. However, in the general case his employer should be free to restrict his rights to transfer his benefits in the event of his death; he is then free to decide if he wants to accept employment.
Advocating this as an issue of marriage rights unnecessarily complicates things and evokes a lot of emotional baggage. Republican or not, we are a very religious nation. Most Christians do not condone homosexuality and do not want gay marriage foisted upon them. If marriage were strictly a spiritual thing done by the church they would be free to define marriage as they pleased. Everything else would then simply be a matter of contract.
Hey Mark, yeah, the democratic party would make an excellent right wing party in many parts of the world, and in many periods of US history. Truly depressing.
Thank you, you just gave me one positive thing to think of coming out of the Clinton years.
Vetoing a veto-proof bill is not living in the Reality-Based Community.
It does let you live in the symbolic high ground, though.
Then again, there’s that whole “wanna get re-elected” thing, which is why so many politicians do terrible things and pretend that they think they aren’t terrible.
-Rob
Seriously, consider what Rob said: “there’s that whole “wanna get re-elected†thing, which is why so many politicians do terrible things and pretend that they think they aren’t terrible.”
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would be stripping us of our rights and civil liberties if it wasn’t popular with the people. They’re the ones you ought to be blaming. The lousy government we have is possible only through the compliance and support of the common man. If you want things to change, they have to change there first.
Or, you know, in the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be defending our rights when the legislature tries to take them away. But good luck with that happening during the Roberts era.
This “goddamned piece of paper” should make one sick as well:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
I agree with you Stan. I will go a little bit further and say that it offends me that the author wrote this piece as if everyone thinks homosexuality is ok. Whether it’s politically correct or not, I am one of many people who think it’s wrong. The last thing we need is to give any sort of ligitamacy to the practise. The “family” is on it’s last legs man and kids have it hard enough as it is without have to ask why they have two daddies or two mommies.
Dear people who think homosexuality is not ok,
Fine. Your opinions are free and respected. But the moment you try to take away the basic rights of people who disagree with you is the moment that you become what is wrong with society.
Don’t think same sex couples are okay? Fine. Good for you.
Don’t think they deserve the same rights as you? Not fine. Compassion shouldn’t be reserved for people just like you.
Actually, Mark, you are the one displaying ignorance and bigotry in your sophomoric failure to understand the crucial role in America of religion and the institutions that it supports. And I say this as a committed atheist. The tone of your post implies that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiotic reprobate.
The inability to understand how rational persons can hold views opposing one’s own is the mark of a poorly educated mind.
I dunno. Being “anti-gay” seems like being “anti-blue” or “anti-tree.” Doesn’t make any sort of rational sense to me. But then, I grew up in Massachusetts and live a stone’s throw from WeHo, so I don’t have a whole lot of experience with that particular attitude. I imagine if you’re a child with two moms or dads in Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Manhattan, and a host of other major metropolitan cities, it’s not a big deal.
Ah - I love it when the bigots come out of the woodwork. If anyone (such as one above) is offended that I wrote this piece “as if everyone thinks homosexuality is ok”, then let me point out the following.
I have absolutely no obligation to write any piece that shows respect to any ignorant views that anyone else may hold. If you don’t like what I write then you are free not to visit the site, or just read the words of other bloggers here. I promise, we will charge you only the appropriate fraction of what it costs to read all of our pieces.that.
Belizean, these words “The inability to understand how rational persons can hold views opposing one’s own is the mark of a poorly educated mind.” are completely irrelevant. I am perfectly able to understand some views that others hold that disagree with my own - for example those of fiscal conservatives. However, the idea that one should respect and understand all views, no matter how nonsensical and bigoted, is just plain silly.
If that means I offend homophobes, then I’ll just have to live with that.
I’m offended that Mark doesn’t extend his Righteous Indignation^{TM} to those who contemn paedophiles and connoisseurs of bestiality.
Jack, there is nothing wrong with bestiality as long as animals are not hurt and there is nothing wrong with paedophiles as long as they don’t abuse children.
Most people who are the victim of sexual violence are women who are raped by men. But I’ve never heard anyone make the case that after a certain age all boys should be castrated (sperm can be extracted and kept frozen until it’s needed for artificial insemination).
Also, there is a lot of evidence that testosterone causes men to behave violently. If all men are castrated then the murder rate will fall dramatically.
If we are willing to put up with dangerous heterosexual people then we should not focus too much on people with other sexual orientations.
In the current context you seem to be implying that no rational person could hold that 1) homosexual relations are immoral, and 2) that they should not therefore receive governmental sanction.
This is the sort of implication one expects from an insular political partisan, not from anyone with a modicum of intellectual depth. Please forgive me if that sounds insulting; it’s not meant to be.
Jack on Oct 19th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
I’m offended that Mark doesn’t extend his Righteous Indignation^{TM} to those who contemn paedophiles and connoisseurs of bestiality.
Just to let you know, bestiality is and for a long time has been legal in Texas, that great bastion of the Religious Reich. Until the US Supreme Court decided Lawrence vs. Texas a few years ago, homosexual sex was not legal in Texas. I guess the Texans didn’t see anything about bestiality to get particularly upset about, while they were hootin’ and hollerin’ against gay people.
BTW, you wouldn’t be trying to draw a link between homosexuals and pedophiles and your “connoisseurs of bestiality,” would you? No, I’m sure that you wouldn’t be trying to raise that old cannard. /sarcasm.
I think the important thing to remember is that homosexuality, like paedophilia, is not a choice. These people are born that way. Therefore, as long as their practices do not hurt anyone they should enjoy equal protection under the law (needless to say, this is much less ambiguous for gays than for paedophiles). In more enlightened parts of the world this means that gays can marry each other.
Just to be clear, for everyone, you are drawing the distinction between pædophiles (those who are sexually attracted to children) and child molesters (those who act on those urges).
There’s an important distinction, then. Pædophiles can never act on their urges, without creating social harm. So, while they are both legal, pædophilia is classified as a mental disorder, whereas homosexuality is not.
Just because someone is “born that way” (hæmophiliacs, left-handed people), doesn’t necessarily mean that we should not attempt to change that. Pædophilia, like hæmophilia, is classified as a disorder (being potentially dangerous, either to the person suffering from it, or to those around him), whereas homosexuality (like left-handedness) is classified as a harmless difference.
That distinction is a social construction (though, I think, a correct one) and there was a time (not that long ago) when both homosexuality and left-handedness were viewed as disorders, to be corrected.
In the current context you seem to be implying that no rational person could hold that 1) homosexual relations are immoral, and 2) that they should not therefore receive governmental sanction.
No person is 100% rational. If I have to buy a T-shirt and there are two identical but differently colored T-shirts I can choose from, then there is usually no rational reason why I should choose one and not the other. So, I just choose whatever color I prefer.
In case of homosexuality, there are people who, if they had a choice, would prefer to live in a society where they don’t exist. They don’t like it, just like I don’t like green T-shirts.
If this preference is based on some notion of morality, then that doesn’t make it rational.
The funny thing is, in a way, gay marriage is actually a conservative cause. Many gays and lesbians live as “swingers” but would actually like to settle down into a more traditional, family-based lifestyle. Legalizing gay marriage would encourage this choice. If you want to be literal (and I do), being pro-gay marriage is being pro-family.
Haha, good point Adam. It seems to me that if someone’s family values are threatened by gay marriage then those values aren’t very strong. In fact, gay marriages tend to be stronger than heterosexual marriages because the couple has so much discrimination to overcome.
Belizean, give a RATIONAL reason for believing homosexuality is immoral, and not one based on some ancient religious text that also says the earth was created in 6 days.
“The higher the monkey goes up the pole, the more you see of its behind”
http://www.bushorchimp.com/
I recall Walter Cronkite making the statement (on another issue) “..they turned it into a monkey house!!”
daemon:
“Belizean, give a RATIONAL reason for believing homosexuality is immoral, and not one based on some ancient religious text that also says the earth was created in 6 days”
Good point! Also, for Belizean and company’s reading pleasure:
bricktestament.com
a lot of Leviticus, from whence the notion of same-sex intercourse is considered an “abomination.” I love the misogyny and rules for slave ownership bit. I’m sure there is a rational explanation for all these Leviticus-inpsired morals, and we await Belizean and company to explain.
That may be true, but if a person (say a paedophile) has caused no harm, then the treatment (for example by medication or castration) must be voluntary, otherwise we’ll end up with a Minority Report situation where punishment precedes the crime.
I seem to be wading into this late, but I am truly shocked at some of the views being expressed here.
How can you (Belizean, Elvisius and co) possibly believe that you have any right to dictate how others live their life as long as they do not inflict harm on others and meet their social obligations (i.e. pay tax, etc.). So someone’s lifestyle makes you uncomfortable? Tough. It’s none of your business. Laws should be flexible enough to allow people to live how they want. It is not the part of a democratic government to legislate religion.
The US is touted as the freeist country in the world, yet laws concerning personal freedom are draconian. Yes, there is freedom of speech, but speech alone is worthless. If people do not have the chance to live as they want, which includes choosing freely who they wish to marry, then they are not truly free.
Oh, and I nearly forgot another burst of indignation!
The claim that allowing homosexuals to marry somehow damages the institution of marriage is insane. What do you really think will happen? It’s not like straight men and women will suddenly decide to turn gay because it’s fashionable. The people who would be getting married are those who would be living together anyway. And it’s certainly not as if there isn’t a chunk of hetrosexual people who’s marraiges don’t work out for one reason or another.
I fail to see how allowing homosexuals to marry could have any bearing on the meaning of marriage. Marriage is a commitment between two people. If you’re religious, then maybe there are some strings attached, depending on what you believe in. But we are talking about civil marriage here, so there is no way to bring religion into this. In case you haven’t noticed, atheists can get married!
Marriage is essentially a promise that two people make each other. Consider it an agreement. Do you really believe that some agreements (barring anatomically dependant ones) can be made only between a man and a woman?
Well said, Joe, but by anatomically dependent do you mean conjoined twins?
Belizean writes:
I’m not sure it’s “rationality” that prevents people from holding such pathetic views. It’s more like a constant quest to examine ones morality, check to see if it’s founded on a few simple widely accepted principles (like the Golden Rule and the Categorical Imperative) - and if it’s not, consider changing parts of it.
Rationality is about correctly deducing consequences of assumptions. One can be completely rational yet a complete jerk if ones assumptions are lousy. And there’s a serious problem of circularity here, since it’s hard to tell which assumptions are “lousy” without using assumptions about what counts as “lousy”. So, we can never expect everyone to agree about morality: we’ll be arguing about it until the human race dies out.
Nonetheless, if one finds something disgusting and evil merely because it’s … well… disgusting and evil - in a completely circular way - then there’s a chance one is stuck in prejudice.
And, I’m pretty sure this is the case for people opposed to gay marriage. I’ve never heard a convincing case that it would actually harm anyone. It would only threaten people who are grossed out by homosexuality - people who find it disgusting and evil because they think it’s… well… disgusting and evil.
PK: That’s not what I had in mind. I was thinking more of some kind of explicit sexual agreement.
If I might distill this down, isn’t the fear of homosexual marriage just another in a long series of outcries from those who fear freedom?
Maybe a more clinical approach is needed for these ignorant and fearful souls. I think they call it aversion therapy.
Time for a War on Homophobia.
Every system of ethics is based on some definition of the good. Call it X. Right actions are consequently defined as those that maximally contribute to X. It is perfectly rational to suppose that X is something other than personal pleasure.
Any act that you perform that does not maximally contribute to X is technically immoral. The degree to which an action is technically immoral is the degree to which it fails to contribute to X below the maximal amount possible. In practice, actions are divided into those that increase X (moral) and those that do not increase X (immoral).
To be concrete consider this example,
X = “total material wealth of humanityâ€.
Because nonprocreative sex, like any activity whose sole output is pleasure, does not in general contribute to X, it is immoral. Procreative sex, by contrast, creates generators of material wealth (called people) and is therefore moral.
In this example, watching a TV sitcom, reading a romance novel, over sleeping, masturbating, having heterosexual sex when there is no possibility of conception, or any other action that does not contribute to material wealth is immoral. A right-actor, rather than seeking pleasure, asks herself at every moment, “What action can I now take that maximally contributes to Xâ€.
This is Basic Ethics 101. I’m quite surprised that so many people are unfamiliar with this.
Belizean, I hate to point it out, but having kids isn’t necessarily beneficial to humanity. If everybody capable of reproducing did so at every possible oppertunity, as your metric seems to mark this as the moral thing to do, the Earth would become massively over populated very very quickly. That would in turn lead to famine, as we have only a finite capacity to produce food, as well as many other bad things, like mass homelessness, etc.
You are putting forth an extremely naive world view, that if followed would have exactly the opposite effect of what you suggest it should achieve.
Also, I hate to point it out, but something which maintains X at its present level should qualify as neither moral or immoral. Morals don’t come in to it, as it has no effect on the status quo (of X). So your examples of immorality (watching a TV sitcom, reading a romance novel, over sleeping, masturbating, having heterosexual sex when there is no possibility of conception) aren’t immoral if you are taking the “total material wealth of humanity†as your guide line. They don’t require a moral choice at all, but arson and vandalism would be considered immoral as they decrease X. If you take “the greater glory of your prefered god” as the source for your morals, then things are different, but you have no right to impose your god on others.
Also, you seem to be confusing ethics and morals. Perhaps you should retake Basic Ethics 101.
Also,
Oops, hit submit by accident.
Well, all I was going to say is that there are situations where you must necessarily take away from X (by for example eating, in your example). Are these actions immoral?
Morals are essentially an arbitrary set of rules, since people are free to choose their own goals. There is no self evident X, and so it is bigotry at its worst to force your morals upon someone else. As long as they are not harming others, how can you possibly justify claiming that your morals are the ones by which they should live.
You are essentially claiming to be better than everyone else, since your moral judgements are the ones you believe others should live by. If that’s what you insist on doing, then I’m sure you can start a cult, and maybe get a few followers. I for one won’t be around when you decide a group suicide is the ultimate in moral duty.
Joe Fitzsimons wrote:
Let’s not be willfully dense. Your point is irrelevant, because I have specified a maximization principle by which one decides how to act. It is also not beneficial to humanity to engage in procreative sex within burning buildings or in the absence of an adequate food supply, but I shouldn’t have to spell that out.
I have put across no world view. I merely gave, in response to a request, an example of a rational ethical system in which homosexual sex is immoral.
To understand why actions that leave X unchanged are normally regarded as immoral, consider the case of a corporate money manager who chooses not to invest the $10 billion in his charge. A year later he still has $10 billion. However, when this is discovered, he will surely be fired. Or consider a physician who could have cured a patient, but instead left him writhing in unspeakable pain. Although she didn’t change the status quo, she would be brought up on charges of criminal negligence and sued for malpractice.
Ethics requires a specification of the definition of the good.
Morals are specific rules of right conduct.
Morals subordinate to an ethic are those rules that generally result in an increase in the good as defined by the ethic.
Morals may be specified without reference to an ethic (in which case the effective ethic is maximal adherence to the moral rules.)
It is virtually impossible to specify morals that apply in all circumstances. [Just as it is virtually impossible to state specific rules of motion that will always lead one to Paris.]
You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of a maximization principle. Take a high school calculus course and get back to me.
Non sequitur. You state that there is no self-evident X and in the same sentence imply the existence of a self-evident X – not forcing one’s morals on others. [Of course, it’s not in the least bit forceful to require under penalty of imprisonment that people recognize as legitimate what the overwhelming majority of them consider to be immoral unions.]
Although on the basis of your post I have in fact decided that I am better than you, you may carefully reread my post to discover your assertions to be false.
Does it matter what he wears? The amount of money he makes or looses is presumably largely independant of the color tie he chooses to wear. That is a decision which leaves X unchanged, but could hardly be considered immoral.
Ah, you caught me! I’ve only been pretending to be a theoretical physicist. Don’t tell PK!
Actually I was just relying on the definition of bigotry.
I’m not trying to alter peoples thoughts. To allow homosexual marriage does not demand that people in general acknowledge anything. They can stick their fingers in their ears and shout “La la la la”, and it makes no difference. The main result will be alterations in tax and inheritance law. You have a moral stand on tax law do you?
Who said “Give on to Ceasar, and double if you’re gay”?
Belizean, your model is oversimplified and ill-defined. Realistically, morality is not a simple optimization over a single parameter. If you want to formulate it that way there are potentially many parameters. And when you include having children in “X = material wealth” you have stretched that concept so far from our everyday meaning that I don’t know what you’re talking about anymore [insert Belizean insult here].
But more importantly, one of the best known moral construction (the ten commandments) is not an optimization problem at all, but a set of boundary conditions.
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The real question is what harm is caused directly to you by allowing same-sex marriages, Belizean?
PS. Joe, nevermind high-school calculus. When are you and Av giving your string theory tutorial?
More than that.
The parameters, to be optimized, conflict. Some of them are impossible to objectively measure. And, moreover, in a pluralistic society, we cannot even expect people to agree on what the relevant parameters are.
Moral philosophers write long and complicated books trying to develop a framework for balancing these competing objectives.
<snark>Boy, will they feel stupid when they find out that it’s all just a simple Calculus 101 maximization problem.</snark>
PK,
No. You do not want to formulate the problem in terms of multiple parameters. You want a single definition of the good. If you have multiple definitions, it means that you’re confused and need to reformulate your ethical theory. The only place that multiple parameters might be said to enter is in the parameterization of the space of possible actions.
I don’t get why you find the idea of children (i.e. new people) as wealth generators strange. Wealth is generated by people. The process of creating people is called “having childrenâ€. If no people are created, no further wealth will ultimately be generated.
[No. This is only the question if I were utterly selfish and advocated public policy solely on the grounds of their effect on me.]
The harm I see in the institutionalization of homosexual unions is a further erosion in the default ethical consensus that good acts are defined as those that contribute to the survival of our civilization. I expect that the chief consequence of this erosion over time will be a decreased tendency in the populace to suppress personal desires for societal benefit. This will result in a reduced likelihood that our civilization will survive future threats to its existence.
Jacques Distler,
Do I really need to upload a tome on moral philosophy in answer to a simple request for an example of a rational ethic that regards homosexuality as immoral?
Is it not obvious that any definition of the good implies the need for evolving concomitant theories on how the good associated with a proposed act is estimated?
Is it not clear that in the context of such theories one can easily explore one’s vicinity in the space of possible actions to find one that most increases the defined good?
Do I have to spell out that there’s a difference between a personal ethical theory and the societal consensus on ethics, and that the former becomes the latter through the usual means of public persuasion and proselytization?
Is it not plain that we already face the problem of a lack of consensus on the choice of parameters relevant to determining the morality of an action?
Do you not see that an explicitly defined good, like any explicit theory, lends itself to criticism and intellectual evolution in a manner superior to that possible with the currently widespread and ethically subjective view that, “We should all just do what our hearts tells us. Kumbaya.�
Joe Fitzsimons,
I apologize for being insulting and impatient with you.
The forced acknowledgement to which I refer is not mental; it is de facto acknowledgement through coerced deeds. Employers, retail establishments, and other organizations will, for example, be forced to extend benefits that they grant to married heterosexuals to married homosexuals irrespective of whether they approve of the latter.
Belizean,
That is clearly no justification for denying homosexuals the right to marry. If an employer does not approve of a hetrosexual marriage, they have no rights to deny benefits. It doesn’t matter that they think there is to big an age gap, or that one party in the marriage is a divorcee, etc. Why should they have the right to choose to deny benefits because they disapprove along similarly ridiculous lines, if the couple involved are gay?
If that’s a problem , then it is also a problem that employers are forced to grant benefits to married heterosexuals whether or not they agree with that marriage.
I think that there is no rational basis on which people reject gay marriage. If that were the case then the discussion would not be about gay marriage per se, but about some other problem that requires gay marriage to be banned in order to be addressed.
All I’ve heard is that marriage should be protected, but as explained above by others, that has nothing to do with gay marriage.
So, that’s just propaganda. The real reason is that the conservatives want to protect traditional Christian values. So, you should take your X to be a measure of how much society deviates from an ideal Christian Taleban country.
Wow! One would have thought that the inadequacy of such a point of view would be self-evident.
But, hey, do get back to us when you’ve (re)formulated a comprehensive ethical theory in terms of a single optimizable parameter.
No, but you do need to come up with an ethical argument that is compatible with some reasonable (as opposed to utterly juvenile) moral philosophy.
Hard to say, as you certainly haven’t done so.
No, you don’t need to explain the difference between personal ethical theories and societal ethics.
And, no, in a pluralistic society, we have no expectation that the former should become the latter.
We do, indeed, face many problems, but I don’t think that’s one of them.
A straw man argument, if I ever met one.
Why don’t you give it a go anyway. You’ll find that the answer is that two people entering into a same-sex marriage cause you absolutely no harm. Moreover, this will be true for everybody.
First of all, there is no ethical consensus in any large society except on the most general principles (as this discussion proves), and in particular whether homosexuality benefits society (from an evolutionary point of view, there should be some benefit, otherwise everybody would be heterosexual). Secondly, We’re not advocating the overhaul of the whole system. Just one rule needs to be changed (a rule which is pretty much arbitrary anyway). It will not damage society, it will improve it by having on average happier people. All it takes is a change in attitude in the general populace. It has been done before (smoking, safe sex), so I really do not see a problem there.
So you should be in favour of same-sex marriages, because (as was pointed out above as well) they reduce promiscuity. Seriously, if you want to eradicate hedonism you have to make much more fundamental changes: Western society has already entered the stage of decadency because we are 1) rich and 2) free. To reduce decadency you have to either make everybody poorer (so they have to work harder and have less time/money to indulge themselves), or less free (for example by imposing religious rules prohibiting fun, think Calvinism). Is that what you want?
Belizean, your model doesn’t work because, if applied, it would create an unproductive society that dedicedly does not maximize even as simple an output as material wealth
Pleasure does serve a purpose in maintaining and increasing productivity. Those who completely eschew all forms of pleasure and liesure eventually burn out, and in quite horrific ways. In the end, they produce less than a more moderate colleague of theirs would. There is evidence that adding a months’ vacation time or allowing workers to cut out early on Friday actually does increase the yearly output of the worker in question, for example.
It assumes that the function of marriage in childrearing is cut off once the child is born, and that there are no unwanted children out there. This is so manifestly silly I don’t know hwat to say. Even if your overall point were valid, there would still be orphans and various other unwanted children out there, and why would a queer couple not be every bit as good at childrearing as their straight bretheren? This is a way, way, way more important function of marriage than the actual mechanical procreative aspect of chldrearing that I don’t even believe that I have to point it out.
if you ask a member of society to forever eschew any possibility of romantic love, and if they actually end up having to listen to you, this individual is almost guaranteed to eventually become wholly unproductive. Marginalizing vast swaths of society does not, in the long run, maximize the wealth of society. Love and sex are the things that make it possible for us to function, not junk that distracts us from the real things we should be doing with our spare time
I also think that I should point out that, under this moral system, golf, amongst many other (to us) innoculous things, is far more immoral than homosexual sex. Golf takes more work time away, uses more resources, in terms of both land and money, and though it employs a few, employs far, far less than using that same land as a factory or something would.
Oh, c’mon!
“Morality = maximize the material wealth of Society” is so silly a concept, it’s not even worth discussing. If you believed that, you would believe that those who contribute negatively to the net material wealth of Society (the terminally-ill, the mentally-handicapped, …) ought to be eliminated (exiled or killed).
You would believe all kinds of crazy-ass stuff.
And merely tweaking the variable to be maximized would solve some problems with your system, while creating a host of others.
The whole idea that you can reduce ethics to a simple 1-variable maximization problem is broken beyond repair.
B.t.w., what happened to the gays in the US military? Are they now allowed to stay in the military because of Iraq?
Jaques–
I certainly agree with you, but I was merely saying, even within the context of what Belizean was trying to do, his examplie still doesn’t work. Even if you try to build some sort of Utilitarian one-variable maximization for your ethics, it will still be very difficult to come up with a way to justify the claim that ‘homosexuality is wrong.’
Count–
Don’t ask, don’t tell is still the rule in the military. So GLBTers are still allowed in the military, just not to be out and in the military.
Could it be that the act of allowing homosexual marriage is, by its encouragement of tolerance, a way of maximizing a desired societal beneift?
bittergradstudent,
Of course it works. Imagine a productive entrepreneur whose productivity depends on his spending 20% of his waking hours having sex with sheep. He would be morally obliged to have sex with sheep in order to maximally contribute to the good, defined in my example as the total material wealth of humanity. This would not change the fact that he is less moral than an entrepreneur of equal talent who could devote 100% of his waking hours contributing to humanity’s total wealth.
You are perhaps also misled by my attempt at maximal simplicity in my example by making no reference to time. In a more realistic example, one defines “the foreseeable futureâ€. If that works out to be 3 years, then a moral person takes those actions that she judges will maximally contribute to X over that interval.
Jacques Distler
Of course we do. Just as we believe personal theories of physics should, through persuasion and proselytization, become those of our society. At the beginning of the 20th century, for example, a minority of people believed that child beating is immoral. Well before the end of that century, they had persuaded the majority of the society to adopt this ethical position and to enact legislation to criminalize it.
Good thing I didn’t use the illustrative example that I first thought to proffer,
X = “the number of edible kumquats on the earthâ€.
You might have wasted even more time in brilliantly analyzing the shortcomings of that definition.
That’s a bit like saying, “The whole idea that you can reduce physics to a simple 1-variable maximization problem is broken beyond repair.†But we do precisely that when we attempt to write down a universal Lagrangian whose action (a single variable) is to be extremized. If you cannot explicitly define the good, then you don’t have an ethical theory. You just have a collection of unjustified, inevitably conflicting rules of behavior. This is the essence of moral confusion. Surely it’s more intellectually profitable to expose explicit definitions of the good to criticism and therefore to continual revision than it is to go through life in a fog of moral confusion.
PK,
There is a substantial ethical consensus in our society and in most others. Leftist members of American society would, for example, be far more comfortable living in an America ruled by the political Right than in Saudi Arabia. Rightist would similarly prefer to live in an America ruled by the Left than in the Saudi Kingdom. It probably seems to you that our ethical consensus is minor, because it is ignored completely in all political discussions. These are all about how various factions disagree. Usually, the chief indicator a major lack of ethical consensus in a society is a civil war.
Evolution does not guarantee the removal of traits not contributing to the survival of species. It is about the successful replication of genes into successive generations. If gene survival occurs at the expense of species mal-adaptation, so be it. See Dawkins The Selfish Gene for a particularly lucid explication.
It’s not clear that it increases the general happiness, as you would have to consider also the unhappiness in the majority that would be engendered by governmental sanction of sex between homosexuals.
I have not advocated an ethical imperative whose sole purpose is the elimination of hedonism. I have merely stated that it is perfectly rational to choose a definition X of the good such that X is not identical to hedonism.
Joel Grant,
I don’t think so. Unlimited tolerance is obviously undesired (as you’d then have to be tolerant of the intolerant). A society is most likely to survive, if it limits its public approbation to practices that clearly contribute toward that aim. Procreative sex clearly contributes to a society’s survival (by creating new citizens) in a way that non-procreative sex does not. Masturbation is used as a coping mechanism by millions. We should not, however, seek to institutionalize monosexual marriage (marriage to one’s self), because the benefit of masturbation to our society is on the order of that of sports and TV watching – inessential. Societies can survive without sports, TV, masturbation, and homosexual sex. They cannot survive without procreative sex.
Belizean:
Yes, but this cannot be applied to homosexuals because they are not more intolerant than others.
Belizean:
Too many new citizens has lead to overpopulation which is the driving force behind so many of the environmental problems we see today. Now you could argue that more people is always better than less people evenif some damage to the environment is done.
However, a doomsday scenario leading to a mass extinction on a similar scale as the Permian Mass Extinction caused by greenhouse gas emissions is no longer considered very unlikely. If that were to happen then there wouldn’t be any humans left on Earth.
Belizean,
Who said anything about “unlimited” tolerance?
I am suggesting that the physical act of homosexuality is not the only element of the moral equation. How we behave as a society matters very much.
I could point out that unlimited intolerance is the definition of totalitarianism but no one is suggesting that unlimited intolerance is a virtue.
Rather, society must balance tolerance, as for instance in racial matters, and intolerance, as for instance murder.
Thus, for me, the question of whether or not non-procreative sex is moral or not moral (and I vote for fabulous!) is just one weight on the scales.
Count Iblis,
Free societies seldom if ever benefit from a reduction in their populations. A greater population means greater brain power available to solve the society’s problems, be they environmental or not.
It is not a coincidence that the United States is both the most powerful country on earth and the most populous country with a long tradition of freedom.
Joel Grant,
Setting up a moral equation is the right way to proceed. The first step is to determine what your society means by “good”. The second step is to identify those behaviors that uniquely contribute to that good in that they are essential to the society’s survival. The third set is to restrict special societal approbation to those behaviors identified in the second step.
That entrepreneur doesn’t exist. It’s made up junk. Someone who does nothing but produce will not produce as much (and I mean overall, not in terms of rate) as someone who enjoys a rich personal life with leisure time and vacations. it is an experimentally verified fact.
Everyone needs personal contact and love in their lives. Even from a callous materialistic viewpoint, their production will slip if they don’t get it. Under your system, it is immoral to keep it from them. If we go with your, “max production over three years” model, those of us queer folk that are actually allowed to marry and have productive relationships will produce more than their counterparts that live in a society where they are repressed for various reasons. Even under this hypersimplified moral system, society is not producing at its optimal rate, and is thus, immoral.
A long tradition of freedom for some (i.e., landowning white males).
I would proffer the following advantages that the US enjoyed reative to Europe that have little to do with it’s large population: a relative isolation from the rest of the developed world, preventing it’s destruction during the two world wars (the destruction of Europe during World War I advanced the US and Japan faster than anything else could have), and a relatively low population density, and a massive abundance of both availible farmland and natural resources.
But if you want to go with the presence of an apartheid-style pseudodemocracy with a large population in the period of 1890-1930 as the reason that the USA rose to the peak of it’s ascendency in the 1950s and 1960s, feel free.
Belizean: “The first step is to determine what your society means by “goodâ€.
OK, I’ll bite. For the U.S., since, 50.2 percent of people are living either as single moms (14 million), single dads (5 million), or in unmarried gay or hetero households (37 million), there’s your answer.
Neither do frictionless pendulums, ideal gases, or perfectly efficient engines. In the case of the latter, it is nevertheless true that we try to build engines that are as efficient as we can make them, knowing full well that we will never achieve perfect efficiency.
In basketball better players arise, when we hold before them the ideal of a perfect player who never misses a shot. In life we will have better citizens (relative to any particular definition of morality), if we hold before them the ideal of a perfectly moral citizen.
If it is actually the case that your capacity for moral action depends on periodically having homosexual sex, then you are morally obliged to have homosexual sex. If your capacity for moral action similarly depends upon your watching TV, masturbating, smoking, drinking coffee, or biting the heads off of live skunks, then you are morally obliged to do so. You would still be less moral than a person of equal moral capacity who was unburdened by such addictions. Needless to say, the fact that your capacity for moral action (contributing to global wealth in my example) requires you to smoke or masturbate is no reason to bestow public approbation on these activities by institutionalizing them. Unlike procreative sex they perform no function essential to the survival of society.
OK, that’s it then, when gays and lesbians gain greater capacity for doing good by getting married, then you’re fine with it? Because by insititutionalising we do not mean that everybody must venture into a gay marriage!
Belizean, I admire your moral contortionism to keep gays from legally marrying each other at all cost.
Amara,
One’s moral ideals are distinct from one’s actions. The latter normally falls well short of the former.
PK,
Please carefully reread my last post for the condition that justifies the institutionalization of a practice.
Belizean–
your idealization is rediculous. If we replaced humans with robots able to build more robots, then we outstrip all of this. And the way you describe an ‘ideal’ human, it might as well be a robot.
Belizean,
Belizean,
I think at this point it has become clear that you oppose gay marraige, and are trying to construct a system of morals under which it is immoral to be gay (or at least to act on it). This is clearly absurd, and I don’t see what there is to be gained by pointing out the flaws in your claims. I realise that you are likely to argue with any counter point, no matter how strong, to put across an opinion you had decided on long before commenting on this post. Is there anything to be gained by continued arguement?
Joel Grant,
Failure to institutionalize a practice is not disapprobation. There are no governmental institutions supporting novel reading, piano playing, or masturbation either.
Joe Fitzsimons,
When your response to an exceedingly logical position with which you disagree is simply that it is “clearly absurdâ€, you are conceding your irrationality in the matter.
bittergradstudent,
If you think it absurd to strive for perfection knowing that you will not achieve it, you are at odds with a long (and I believe uniquely Western) tradition that began with the ancient Greek worship of excellence.
If you teach, try this experiment. Prepare an extremely difficult exam. Segregate your class into two groups. Tell one group that they must strive to get 100%. Tell the other group that achieving 100% is impossible, so it’s okay if they get 40%. Compare the scores of the two groups.
PK,
Not quite at all cost. There is a condition under which I would favor the legalization of same-sex marriage. I would favor it after the development of technology that makes homosexual sex procreative. [This will surely be possible within the next 100 years.]
[And just to be clear, it is currently legal for gays to marry in all 50 states. What is illegal in the great majority of states is same-sex marriage.]
So for you the defining function of marriage is to have children? That is a very narrow view of the institution indeed…
Why are we instutionalizing the marriage of sterile heterosexual couples, then? Should we ban the marriage of women with tied tubes or men with vasectomies? What about men marrying post-menopausal women?
If you don’t wnat ot ban all of these things as well, then this argument is patently rediculous.
And striving for a Spartan society maximizes nothing but suffering.
Belizean,
Novel reading et. al. are legal and there’s the rub.
Besides, marriage limited to non-procreative sex, or no sex, is and will continue to be a legal and governmentally-supported institution for at least as long as senior citizens have healthy libidos.
Belizean, you are cherry picking the arguements that suit you. Your overly simplified model, where the morality of an act is directly proportional to its impact on the material wealth, doesn’t even support the claims you make. It does, however, suggest that slavery is highly moral, as you get a lot of work out of people in exchange for very little.
The fact that it is not clear at all that a higher birth rate would increase the net wealth of humanity seems to have completely alluded you.
That said, your model is ridiculously flawed to begin with, as human moral codes can be far more complicated than the toy model you are using, as Jacques and others have said more elloquently.
Your position is neither logical/rational nor in any way defensible. You are clearly seeking a justification for your prejudice, and are failing miserably to justify any of the claims you make.
But to reply to one of you previous comments
Actually encouraging literature is essentially the same as encouraging novel reading. Not only is ther a Nobel Prize for literature, but there are countless (government sponsored) programs aimed at encouraging creative writing etc.
The same is essentially true of piano playing (music). There are many orchestras etc. which recieve government funding. Also virtually every developed country has some kind of national academy of music.
Belizean very clearly illustrates what I wrote about on my blog some time ago, see here.
Humans are not 100% rational and our irrational prejudices will slow down the progress of our society. I’m saying that this is unavoidable for anthropic reasons. A typical intelligent being in the universe will find him/her/itself living in a “backward” society.
PK,
It’s the traditional view. In ancient Greece and Rome, for example, where open homosexuality was more common than in our society, it was understood that your homosexual affair was for personal gratification, while your marriage was part of your civic duty – the creation of new citizens.
bittergradstudent,
Marriage as it is currently instituted contains obsolete provisions reflecting pre-scientific ideas about conception. These were fostered in our society by Biblical accounts of aged postmenopausal women giving birth. I believe that the institution of marriage should be updated to reflect our current knowledge about conception. Accordingly, I believe that marriage licenses should not be granted to any couple, when current medical knowledge rules out the possibility of conception through sex between members of the couple.
To spell my views out:
The cases for which I believe that a marriage license should not be granted include: 1) an impotent heterosexual man and fertile heterosexual woman, and 2) a potent heterosexual man and a sterile heterosexual woman.
Once granted, a marriage licenses should automatically expire after 10 years, if the sexual union did not produce a child.
This means that two 80-years-old cannot marry each other. But a couple of 80-year-olds that succeeded (when they were still fertile) in producing children (before the end of the 10-year expiration period of their license) do possess a valid marriage license.
This means that a man who did not impregnate his wife, before he was rendered impotent in an accident, will only remain married to her until the couple’s marriage license expires due to lack of children.
Couples (heterosexual or homosexual) that intend to remain childless may be granted the status of “civil unionâ€. Couples (heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual) that intend to raise children created through some means other than sex between members of the couple may be granted the status of “joint guardianshipâ€. Only couples that are capable of producing a child through sex (between member of the couple) may be granted the status of “marriage”. Private parties may choose to honor or discriminate on the basis of these categories however they wish.
In short, I believe that the institution of marriage should be more exclusive, not less.
Joel Grant,
Homosexual sex — like novel reading, piano playing, and masturbation — is also legal. Where sodomy laws still exist, they are not enforced. There is a great deal of difference between the legality of homosexual sex and that of same-sex marriage.
Joe Fitzsimons,
Okay, so if the United States enslaves the entire population of California, you think that that will increase the total quantity of American wealth? Dude, where did you learn your economics?
Unless you’re some sort of antiquated Marxist, it’s pretty clear. In economically free societies, higher birthrates mean more wealth-creating brain power, which means more wealth. If your point is that having children in Stalinist North Korean, or in an African kleptocracy, or on the surface of the sun is not necessarily conducive to wealth creation, well Duuhhh! That’s as if I had asserted that lifting weights builds muscle, and you brilliantly pointed out that this isn’t true if one’s diet is restricted to 400 calories per day.
It’s true that human moral codes are confused. But that’s irrelevant. My example’s purpose was to show that a rational morality exists in which homosexual sex, in contrast to heterosexual sex, is in general immoral. If your position is that any morality formulated as a maximization principle is irrational, your position is simply untenable. Your distaste for any particular maximization principle is hardly proof of the irrationality of all maximization principles or even of the one in question.
The government also supports homosexual sex with tens of millions of dollars in AIDS research. So by your reasoning there already exists a governmental institution supporting homosexual sex. This favors my assertion that there is as much official disapprobation of homosexual sex as there is of novel reading, piano playing, and masturbation.
So, ignoring the totalitarian silliness of your mariage proposal (!), you are happy with three institutions: Marriage, Civil Union, and Joint Guardianship. They have to offer effectively the same rights to partners as a marriage (otherwise, civil unions and joint guardianships are just names without any meaning). But then why not be modern and call it all Marriage? It saves a whole lot of bureaucracy.
Oh dear.
Do you really believe that AIDS is specific to homosexuals? There are many mechanisms for the transmission of HIV and of AIDS, none of which are specific to homosexuals.
We live on a planet with finite resources. The more people there are, the quicker we deplete natural resources. The planet cannot support an unlimited number of people, and many countries (including many ‘economically free’ countries) are over populates.
In the vast majority of countries, substantially higher birth rates would lead to disaster.
You are cherry picking the consequences and interpretation of your model. That a higher birth rate is necessary beneficial to mankind is in no way clear, and many of the consequences which are clear you choose to ignore.
Why don’t you pick X to be the total birth rate, or something similar and equally as ridiculous? Why not just say let X be inversely proportional to the number of homosexual marriages, and wear your biggotry on your sleave?
Belizean,
Well, yes. Same-sex marriage is what the original post is about.
Thus, the analogies to novel reading etc. are not on the mark.
Throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, in every industrialized country (US, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan), economic growth has been accompanied by falling, not rising birth rates.
Your “theory” is not just logical nonsense, it is empirical nonsense as well.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Talk to the thousands to millions of AIDS victims in Africa, and ask them if their condition is due to homosexual sex. Perpetuating this sterotype spreads disease and stigmatizes thousands. I could go on on this point, but the AIDS in Africa issue more than dispells this ignorant, ignorant claim.
At best, you are intellectually lazy. More likely, you are just a vicious human being enjoying your pretty straight white male privelige. Enjoy your life. I’m done with this thread.
PK,
Non sequitur. They would definitely not have to offer the same rights to partners as marriage.
Joe Fitzsimons,
Whether it is specific is irrelevant. AIDS transmission is a huge risk in homosexual sex and a relatively small risk in heterosexual sex. An AIDS cure would disproportionately help homosexuals. Hence money spent on such a cure can fairly be said to support homosexual sex, despite being of marginal benefit to heterosexuals. [Only 12% of AIDS cases claim to have gotten the disease from heterosexual transmission. Given the stigma of homosexuality, it’s safe to assume that this number exaggerates the true fraction.]
You’re thinking about resources like a 19th-century Malthusian. Available resources are not in the long run limited by the quantity of any physical commodity, but by the quantity of human brain power that identifies them as such. If we were monkeys, it’s true that our energy supply would be limited to wild foods and the direct absorption of sunshine. As humans, we’ve used our brains to exploit wood, then coal, then oil, then uranium, and fusion power is likely within a century. The more brain power we apply to the problem, the sooner we’ll be on fusion or some other alternative.
Jacques Distler,
So all we need to do to accelerate economic growth is to reduce the population. No doubt maximal economic growth will occur when the population is zero. Obviously, falling birthrates was not a cause of economic growth (otherwise any country could become wealthy by killing off its population, which hasn’t worked too well in North Korea).
First off, birth rates did not decline in the first part of the industrial revolution; they increased. Secondly, subsequent declines in birth rates were always exceeded by declines in the death rate, with the result that the annual supply of people increased throughout most of these centuries, as evidenced by the huge rise in the populations of these countries. The stagnation of Western European economies of the late 20th century is largely due to falling birth rates. This has required them to import huge quantities of immigrants to keep their economies afloat. In short, more people, more wealth. [I think that your intuition on this and that of Joe F are probably off, because you’re confusing “total wealth†with “median standard of livingâ€.]
bittergradstudent,
No more than about 33% of AIDS in Africa is transmitted by sex of any sort. Because it has long been known that African tribesmen are commonly bisexual, and because heterosexual transmission rates in the U.S. are low, sexual transmission of AIDS in Africa is likely due to anal sex. By contrast, the bulk of AIDS cases in Africa are due to syringe sharing – either through iatrogenic transmission or in African homes, the vast majority of which contain a syringe kit that is shared among family members. The numerous cases of young children with AIDS whose mothers are AIDS-free support this. Perpetuating the idiotic and willfully ignorant claim that AIDS in Africa is largely due to heterosexual sex, has probably cost millions of lives.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12665438
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9823041
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1886189
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15034989