cherdano, on 2011-July-01, 07:06, said:
What I don't understand: Why do you want the state to enforce (4) with respect to gay couples, but not with respect to heterosexual couples? The only way to make your position consistent is to argue (among other things) for outlawing marital sex with contraception. Would you vote for such a law? For outlawing divorce?
In effect, you are asking the state to selectively enforce your view of marriage. It is hard to distinguish this selectivity from discrimination.
What you make legal helps to form societal expectations and stigmas. These expectations and stigmas are very important in moral formation. Let us take the example of promiscuity. Suppose that I and my friend both engaged in promiscuous activities while at university, and by some misfortune he caught a serious STD, then to my mind I would be partly responsible. After all, by taking part in that behaviour I have legitimised it. Had I been chaste, and advocated chastity, it would likely have had some effect on my friends behaviour. A similar argument holds for gambling and drug addiction. Everyone who gambles and takes drugs legitimises those activities, and by doing that they take on a portion of guilt for every person who is damaged by those activities.
Gay marriage legitimises a philosophical view of life that I believe to be very damaging. I do not think that the fact that the rise in individualism has coincided with legalisation of drugs and abortion. In an individual outlook, the fact that some people can gamble/use drugs/have promiscuous sex without ill effect is reason enough to legalise it, in a Christian outlook, the fact that some people are damaged by an activity is reason enough for me to deny it to myself by making it illegal. (Short version - I am my brothers keeper).
Life as service vs the cult of the individual is at the heart of the cultural wars. If we do not reject individualism it is only a matter of time before we legitimise euthanasia, and unfettered inequality. I believe that individualism has eroded society in areas as diverse as support for socialised medicine, to spawning the belief that the only duty of a CEO is to make money for his shareholders (Since shareholders=owners, this is only the recurring belief that owners bear no responsibility for the welfare and working conditions of their employees, and should instead squeeze wages as much as possible to increase profits).
I find it deeply ironic that extreme secularists see themselves as descended from the enlightenment and rationalist movements, when those philosophers believed almost to a man that the only way a democracy could function was if voters believed that their primary responsibility was to society and their fellow man rather than themselves, and even those who rejected Christianity as vehemently as Voltaire, believed that some form of public religion would be necessary to maintain that sentiment. (That's probably why so many of them were deists....).
Thus, I think that legal protections for marriage should be set up in such a way that they enhance the idea of marriage as a good for society, with duties that extend beyond the two persons involved. There is more than one way to do this. I actually think that restricting things like tax breaks for marriage to those marriages with children would be a positive step. On the other hand, I also have lots of sympathy for single parents, who often have very difficult lives. Perhaps the ideal would be most money on a child benefit type basis, with a transferable tax allowance for married couples with children aswell (eg, treat a household as a single entity with a single income, but tax bands twice as wide - I do not see why a family with one earner on 40k should be worse off than a household with two earners at 20k, when stay at home parents contribute so positively to society as a whole).
The issue of what to make illegal is complicated. Not everything that is immoral should be illegal, sometimes small evils must be tolerated to prevent greater abuses. I beleive swearing to be immoral, but an attempt to make it illegal would certainly bring grave suffering on society by stifling legitimate criticism and creating a dangerous apparatus of censorship. Among those who share my pro-life position and general Christian sentiments, opinion is divided on whether it would be correct to make contraception illegal even in ostensibly catholic countries, although I lean towards yes. But making the distribution of contraception illegal is different from making "sex with contraception" illegal, which is what the post suggested. I would certainly be against that.
I would certainly vote to end no fault divorce. And I think that is a no-brainer. Divorce should be difficult, available only to the suffers of serious abuse. Again, because I think that no fault divorce has encouraged people to slide into marriage without giving it due consideration. Among my acquantices it seems like many have fallen into relationships (virtually by accident), eventually moved in together, and eventually bought a house/got married, without every taking some time out to think about whether this is the right relationship, about what things need to change, about making a plan for kids and what kind of life they plan on building for themselves, and I think that this does a lot of damage. Marriage used to act as an enforced decision time, and I think that that is a very positive aspect of life long commitments. I strongly suspect that this is that having a "trial period" of living together before you get married makes you substantially more likely to get divorced. Its hard to say no after you have been living together and there has not been any disasters.
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