Same sex marriage and Polygamy

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

(This has little to do with the presidency but I like the folks in GDP, and it certainly bears on American politics.)

Many have noted that there is no philosophical bright line differentiating expansion of the marriage franchise to any two adults versus expanding it to whatever family arrangements consenting adults can envision.

It's true. There is no overwhelming abstract logical sense to drawing the line at one woman and one woman. But the fact that one woman and one woman is an arbitrary expansion of the institution of marriage points up that one man and one woman is only a little less arbitrary.

"One man, one woman" is not the obvious natural state of human beings. What's "natural" is polygamy with a fairly direct correlation between a man's number of wives and his wealth and/or political power, with the side-result that many or most poor men are un-marriageable by definition. ("One man, one woman" is not a boon for women. It is an egalitarian concession won by ordinary men from powerful men. In a polygamous society most women can still married and have children while the bulk of men cannot. The mathematical convenience of constant war in such a society becomes obvious.)

Anyway... the point I'm leading up to is that there is a PROFOUND practical reason why we should have same-sex marriage without necessarily requiring the state to sanction more exotic arrangements.

Our society is constructed around the idea of unions of two people. For instance, how many people does it take to buy a house? Optimally, two. Houses are located, built, priced and financed in a society where two adults joining forces is considered normal. So of course housing markets evolve toward two-person solutions. (That doesn't mean that single people can't buy houses or that all couples are two-income or anything like that. It is about the NORM. The average which markets naturally evolve to serve. Example: If you are seven feet tall you can buy jeans, but in fewer places and for more money. An average sized person has a much easier time buying clothes.)

Everything in our society has evolved in a marketplace full of couples. And no one should be denied an opportunity to participate in normality. The state doesn't have to sanction exotic arrangements, though it should certainly tolerate such. But since two adults with an emotional bond joining forces against the cruel world is our social norm then anyone denied participation in that most basic arrangement is, indeed, being denied the option basic participation in our society.

Not every heterosexual who wants to marry can and many who can chose not to, but at least every heterosexual adult has the legal right to pursue normality if they so chose. (I am unmarried and it's a real pain sometimes. A lot of things seem set-up with the assumption I have a better half.)

It's as if Italian-Americans were not allowed to drive. That's formally unfair, of course, but consider the practical also. Our entire society is built around automobiles! Not only would such a rule be unfair, it would all but preclude Italian-Americans living in Los Angeles. The whole infrastructure there evolved with the expectation that almost everyone could drive and life is thus particularly slanted against non-drivers.

"Not being able to drive isn't such a hard-ship... why not ride a bike?" That's callous in any instance, but when all the main arteries are highways that forbid bikes it moves from callous to actively cruel.

I cannot enumerate the ways two person units are favored as th norm. Having lived my whole life in a nuclear-family culture I know I probably take most of them for granted. But they're there. It would be impossible for them not to be there! All aspects of a society are informed by social norms.

And when "normal" is marriage then civil-unions are an affront because they are intrinsically abnormal. Marriage is not about the state sanctioning your love. It is about the state sanctioning you majority status as a married couple. The word matters when it serves as a de facto definition of full social participation.

[madeline_con]

1. Did you say single people can't buy houses? eom

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. No, but the expectation of a certain number of two income purchasers shapes the market.

[boppers]

5. I'm not following you, at all.

Expectation of a certain income level in the purchasers, yes, but that could be one person, a co-op, or a multi-person corporate rental agency.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. I am single and have bought a house in my life. The point is that

ever aspect of the housing market has grown up in the context of the expectation that most home buyers are married couples.

If America tended toward extended Italian style families houses would be a lot bigger on average. If marriage was an unknown institution houses would be smaller on average. And so on.

Ironically, what I am saying is more true today than it was fifty years ago since two-income households have become the norm.

It's not whether any single person (or vast polygamous family) ever buys a house. It's that social system are inter-related and derived from certain norms.

Cars were built to fit on roads made for horse-drawn vehicles. Then those horse roads were paved to accommodate the size of cars, which were originally dictated by horse wagons. So then you open a restaurant and paint lines in your parking lot and you size the parking spaces to fit the cars that were made to fit the roads, etc., etc.

Everything evolves in light of everything else.

So when I say our society is designed for two-adult units it is almost a tautology. There's no way around it.

In the old days before ATMs and working suburban moms were commonplace it was a serious problem for a single person to go to the bank. The bank was only open while you were at work.

One could deduce that the system anticipated that most people who worked 9-5 had a partner who didn't work. Same with markets, dry-cleaners, etc. The world was designed for stay-at-home wives to do certain things during the hours their husband was at work.

Many things have changed during the last two generations to accommodate the ideas of working wives being the norm. Supermarkets are all open late, for instance. They didn't used to be.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Society is largely self-designed to accommodate the average.

[SwampG8r]

3. i agree in spirit

but you will never divorce the word marraige from its religious connotations

if semantics are going to hold you back then you WILL be held back as long as you insist on the word marriage

marriage in the mind is a function of the church
government should not use the word at all
it should have been civil union from the start
the joining of people into corporate entities is the job of govt

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. I'm all about the Establishment Clause and think the govt. shouldn't sanction sacraments

But words do, to some degree, mean what people use them to mean.

So since pretty much everyone uses the word to describe something other than a religious sacrament then civil union is called "marriage" in our society.

I'm with you. I don't think the state should call any such union "marriage" but we will see universal "gay marriage" looooong before secular heterosexual married couples start referring to their arrangement as civil-union.

[SwampG8r]

9. i have no doubt we will see gay marriage in fact

but in name i bet its something else

and at the end of the day when you come home to people who love you do you really really care what you had to call it to get it?

[boppers]

4. It takes two people to buy a house?

Whaaaa?

[stopbush]

7. Er, many families are single-income families as the wife doesn't earn an income,

even tho she works her ass off.

Two people to buy a house?

[Lilith Velkor]

10. Why should full social participation depend on being "normal?"

The marketplace should exist to serve the people, not the other way around. And ALL people - single, couple, quintuple, whatever - have the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.

To use your analogy, we should build our cities so that driving a car is unnecessary. That choice is going to be forced on us sooner or later, so why not plan for it?

[TheKentuckian]

11. I see this as a reach based on dual incomes being a recent invention alone.

I'll leave the government's role in social engineering alone for the most part. Well, other than to say their should be none and that I understand the historical context of the social structure point made but that doesn't tell me anything about why we need to legislate it today. I think this argument also opens yourself up to the childbearing functions and ends up a net equality loss. I also think its a bit hypocritical to ever dole out the rights based on "normal".

The dual income structure is the Reich's response to feminism. They made women in the workplace a great way to increase productivity, reduce costs by paying them less to do the same work, and of course to create industry at the expense of our children while we wistfully pretend they don't really need the influence of their parents during their formative years and "quality" can more than make up for quantity. Instead of a situation where diversity of household responsibilities and roles could be taken by both parents, you know Mr. Mom and "My wife the doctor", we get to people scrambling trying to fit raising offspring into crammed lives and generally a lot of weight on momma. If we gave two shits about families we'd structure our economy around one income or two part times so that every one can and is expected to fully participate in the home and accomplish somethings. BUT NO...No, its all about growth, squeezing and squeezing.

One income a generation and a half ago would take care of a home, a car or two, vacations, and retirement. Now two to people working doesn't necessarily get you there because we have to squeeze out some productivity and increase consumerism. We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube of course. What we planted will grow and their will be consequences but that doesn't mean we need to continue down the same paths. Some ideas may need to fall hard to cushion the real impact and we're going to have to make real changes but we can navigate to a real standard of living in a decent society if we the people are willing to make it happen. Some ingrained ideas will have to be left on the wayside in the name of practicality.

If we want to do some social engineering, then lets make ourselves useful by helping parents lay down a foundation for their children and stay out of choosing their families. Its plenty of kids that need some parents out there. I bet they're less picky than us if they have two dads, a couple of moms, a dad and two moms, four dads and a mom, or two and two.
What we are used to doesn't really stand up against the concept of equality. Finding ways to exclude anyone from rights or responsibilities isn't demonstrating a core belief in the concept.