The problem with "domestic partnership"Follow

She was implying that since she knows of a case in which a child was better off after having been removed from his biological parents and adopted by a pair of women (she doesn't state the exact conditions of the original family, nor explicitly states that the women are lesbians, but it's implied) that this somehow negates my statement about the optimum conditions for children to be born in society.

Um... It doesn't. I'm sure we can find a case in which a child was raised by blind chimpanzees and turned out just fine, but I don't think we should construct our entire social system around encouraging children to be raised this way. We encourage the raising of children under conditions most likely to produce the best results. There are no guarantees of success, but overall we'll get a better result.


I guess sometimes I don't include the whole line of reasoning. I can't. If you think my posts are long now, they'd be ridiculous if I had to do this every single time. I expect that you've read enough of my posts on this subject to understand the context of this one. Specifically, I'm talking about why *I* and others who are not married would be ok with granting any set of benefits to those who are. There has to be something in it for me here, right? I have to see a benefit to society as a whole, otherwise there's no reason for the benefits to exist.


We could reward anyone who chooses to raise a child equally (as many have suggested). And we certainly already do have a number of benefits that do apply to anyone raising a child regardless of circumstances. However, I believe that there is value to encouraging specific behavior with regard to the production of children in the first place. That value is why I'm ok with providing the benefits of marriage, and why those benefits are attached to marriage in the first place. Again. If we just wanted to reward people for supporting children, we'd just tie those things to having children, and ignore marriage entirely, right?


So... If we're going to provide some additional benefits which apply to relationships outside of simply helping pay to raise children, then it's useful to ask why those benefits exist and what they do. I'm doing that. I know Joph loves to argue that the benefits of marriage don't have anything to do with raising children, and a lot of people tend to chime in with the "but we have other benefits tied to children" argument. But if the benefits are *not* about children, then why do they exist?


Put it another way. Convince me that I should pay more into the pension fund so that a married guy's spouse can continue to draw on it after he's died. Tell me why I must do this by law. Then include tax tables, health benefits, social security benefits, etc. Do this without mentioning anything having to do with children. Just two people who've chosen to live together and share their lives and finances together.


Don't tell me how it benefits *them*, because of course it does. Tell me why I should provide those things. How does it benefit *me* or society as a whole?

No. I'm arguing your optimal conditions are a joke.

Ok. Let's appoint you the architect of the new social order. I want you to define the optimal conditions in which children in our new society will be born, and construct some system to attempt to maximize the rate at which children are born into it.

Go.

Society as a whole or you?

You're angry you aren't a gay man who can be married, so you get nothing.

I'm glad we finally have a gay rights thread that boils down to you stomping around and demanding you're right.

I hope you have a gay child so you can finally get a benefit from gay marriage.

Edited, May 7th 2009 10:06pm by CBD

Either.


Maybe this is a wacky concept, but I don't believe that we should be providing benefits to groups of people just because it might be a nice thing to do. Because there's no end of nice things we might do, isn't there? We should really have some criteria to decide which benefits we provide from the state, and why.


So yeah. There need to be some reason to provide these benefits. I'll ask again: Why should I pay more into my pension so that my married co-worker's wife, who didn't work a day on the job, can gain the benefits of his pension after he's died? Why can't I list a recipient for my pension as well?


Answer the question. If you can't or wont answer it, then how can you say I'm wrong? If you don't know why we provide those benefits now, then how can you rationally make a decision regarding changes to who should receive them?

Well we sure as fuck don't give them out because they might be a bad thing, and we sure as fuck don't give them out because it wouldn't matter at all, so I'm not sure what you want.

Oh, unless we're going to focus on the word might. In which case I refer you to the rest of the thread that involves you trying to focus on one aspect of gay marriage instead of the big picture, and then proceed to blame everyone else for the circular argument as you sit there ignoring that no issue is so simple as to focus on one aspect of it.



There is where someone points out that separate but equal was ruled to be unconstitutional. You'll proceed to try to point out every single minute difference between gay marriage and straight marriage. Everyone will point out that there's exceptions to the rule, and for you that's A-OK for some sick reason. The exceptions are what started this thread.

If you think it's perfectly ok for someone to be unable to be with their partner as he/she dies because of conflicting laws among states possibly confusing nurses who have far better things to be keeping track of, say so. Stop hiding behind a lot of words.



Your analogy sucks and does not in any matter relate to the issue at hand. Make some attempt to be relevant.



There's a variety of reasons. Everytime you bring this up, you get obsessed with children. People point out the exceptions and invalid statements you make, and eventually we get to this point where you ***** about circular arguments and how we're not understanding you.

Edited, May 7th 2009 10:51pm by CBD

Funny how you solved this yourself.



So its your opinion that the child born to married couple doesn't have to be their biological offspring so long as we are willing to assume it, good to know. I'm pretty sure we can do that for the children of gay couples as well. And since like hetero couples we don't know which gay couples will come to have children after they are married, but a statistical number of them will, I see no reason to not extend these benefits. Unless of course your willing to draw a line in the sand to show what percentage makes this acceptable.

Again, been answered. A bunch of times. Now you'll huff anf insist that it really hasn't but, strangely, no one else thinks this. I'm pretty much okay with you being the one voice demanding that the same question be answered again and again and again and again while you insist that any answer that wasn't the one you wanted doesn't really count.

This doesn't mean I'll humor you on it; I'm just content with you making a fool out of yourself by doing it.Why? There's nothing in it for me. Maybe if you were the one guy who makes the rules, I'd jump through your hoops of "I need charts and graphs and tables!!" but you're not and so I'll just laugh at you instead.

Because they have children, who grow up and post in the Asylum.

Oh, it's good enough to assume that the child is the genetic offspring of the father? As if... like as if it doesn't really matter whether the father is the child's genetic father, or just the man in the child's life raising the child?

Beautiful, devoted, caring, responsible fathers, men can be who are raising their adopted, step, or assumed children.

I don't think anyone can't see Gbaji's position. It's simply that few people, if any here, seem to agree with it.

That's why it'd be a waste of time to try to change his opinion on it. You could present whatever chart or table or whatever you wanted and it's a simple matter to dismiss it with "Nope, not convinced that it's good enough" and his response would be 100% correct: you didn't convince him. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a good thing or a bad thing, it just means that you didn't convince him.

There's nothing core to the debate in this thread which wasn't already hashed out in the last thread (including the answers Gbaji refuses to acknowledge). So I'll be happy just knowing that another state legalized it and hoping that more states will follow suit somewhat quickly.

Oh, I know. It's just very disheartening. I think we have an expectation in us that when someone becomes more educated and better able to express themselves, they also become more justice-centered and open-minded. It's just always a shock to me to see the exact opposite. Ah, it sucks being young and naive :-/