It would take a lot to ruin my day nowFollow

I'm sure some people have made that argument Gbaji, but it was never part of the main discussion that happened here in the asylum. sorry I didn't read the 30 page thread.

Of course they should get benefits. Absolutely. I don't think that's the main reason or focus, but yes absolutely they should. Of course most of your argument is you spouting off your imagined reasons for marriage and the insisting we accept them, because after all they're so obvious.

Personally Gay marriage is about equality, absolutely. Getting all the benefits and costs associated with marriage is part of that equality, and I have never argued anything else. To my knowledge neither joph, or pensive have ever argued that the benefits don't enter into it, although I'll let them speak for themselves. Or really anyone else that I've read in the asylum with the exception of a few people who came in for a post or two and then left.

Edited, Jul 14th 2009 9:39pm by Xsarus

Almost all gay marriage topics start off with that argument. The most recent 30 page one was an exception because at some early point, someone (I believe it was Pensive in fact) clarified that my own position was specific to who could or could not qualify for state benefits. The conversation pretty much took off from that starting point.

Most of the time (and there were a few examples in that thread as well), the subject is debated on the demand for the right to choose who you can marry, and the "right" to visit your spouse in the hospital, the "right" to have power of attorney over them, etc.

Answer honestly. Have you ever heard someone start out a discussion about the need for gay marriage and argue that gay marriage is necessary because gay couples ought to be able to file their taxes using the "married" columns? Or that they ought to get a tax break if they put their partner on their health care? Or that they should be able to gain their spouses pension in the event of death? No one *ever* argues these issues unless someone else brings it up first. Which is kinda telling when you realize that the *only* things denied to gay couples by a law like prop8 are those things. And not even those, since many of them are also included in California's generous Domestic Partnership laws.



Then why not single people? What's so "absolute" and "obvious" about this?



Yup. Obvious. Kinda like it's obvious why cars have tires. Some of us don't have to pull them off and see what doesn't work anymore to noodle out their function. And some of us innately understand that benefits granted to people who enter into certain legally binding contracts are typically designed to be incentives to get them to enter into those things in the first place.

I'll ask again. If not for the reasons I've outlined, then why does the government do this? No one seems to have a good answer for this. Funny that...



Equality under the law does not mean equal benefits granted to everyone by the government. Otherwise, every single benefit program with any set of criteria attached to them would be a violation of the principle of equality and should be eliminated on constitutional grounds. If you want to go this route, I'm more than happy to, since it would literally eliminate about 75% of the entire Federal government (and large chunks of state governments as well).

Sigh. Made all of these arguments before...

Finally! Catwho made the claim you're claiming someone did. You aren't totally full of hot air. Nevermind that she was the only one, and hardly an example of most people, but whatever. Soeone made the argument, so I'm satisfied.



I'm not blaming you for anything you dunce; I'm asking you to provide examples of **** because I don't remember specific occurrences of them, because quite frankly, you often imagine or greatly exaggerate what other people say.



Feels good man




If you kill everyone who doesn't accept you, you're accepted in society, pretty much purely by definition.



Well then why don't you point out what you're responding to, because I have no idea which of my "previous statements" you are talking about. You know if I was actually trying to change the subject I'd do something exactly like question my opponents technique and then proclaim it not worth arguing about, because I was afraid of answering questions.

Why can't you ever answer a ******* question? I mean a lot of the time I am unhappy with you purely because you're such a smug ******* *** about clarifying your position or references and like to pretend that I have some evil motivation or insidious plot going on in asking you to ******* clarify something.

And, once again, the difference here is that if someone was asked "Hey, can you actually support your claim about why cars have tires?", most of us could build a much better case than sputtering and saying "It's OBVIOUS! It's just OBVIOUS!" over and over and over or else demanding that the other person prove why our claims are wrong instead.

Yeah, kind of like that.

income splitting and dependent claiming are because it makes more sense for the government to treat married people as a unit rather then as individuals. It simplifies property rights and taxes associated with joint ownership, as well as reflecting the was a marriage works.

Pension benefits as joph mentioned is due to the emergence of women's rights. This can also be tied into a lot of the property stuff.

In all honesty, even if I accept your premise, I think that the cost is so minimal, it's worth it to not create a rift in society.

Why? It's funny because you say it "makes more sense" to do this, but why does it? Why am I the only one who gets attacked for stating the "obvious"? Of course it makes more sense. Can you figure out why?



Yup. Again: Why? And I don't mean "why would two people choose to do this?". I mean "Why would the state require it of two people?". What's in it for the government?



Even Joph never claimed it had to do with women's rights. We were specifically talking about movements to pass legislation requiring that pension benefits be extended automatically to spouses in the event the pensioner should die. It has 100% to do with making sure that a workers spouse is cared for in the event of his/her death. At the time these changes were made, it very much was based on an assumed traditional family "man works, woman takes care of the children". If both members of the marriage work, then there's no need for one to gain the other's pension, right?

Take away the children, and there's no reason why a man and a wife couldn't both have careers and earn sufficient funds to provide for their retirement(s). None at all. It is only the assumption that a spouse may need to give up her career in order to care for children that there is any need at all for this sort of thing. Hence, while Joph loves to dance around the issue, it's pretty clear why workers would want this, and it has everything to do with the potential that the couple may produce children.

At the end of the day, it's one more incentive. If a woman gets knocked up and is considering whether to marry the guy, get an abortion, give the child up for adoption, or raise it as a single mother, each and every single benefit granted to married couples acts as an incentive for her to choose that course of action. She might think her life is over. She'll never be able to care for herself and her child. She might worry about how she'll manage after the child is grown. It's startling just how many of the government benefits we provide to married couples serve precisely to address those concerns. Not perfectly, to be sure, but they do address them.




The cost is not about the dollars though. The cost is social in nature. Whether you agree with me or not, there are people (like me) who believe that marriage benefits exist for this reason. If they are extended to include gay couples, then that can no longer be true. Now, they exist purely to benefit any two people who marry regardless of whether they can produce children together.

This waters down the benefit. Over time, it also removes the importance of the benefits in the first place. I imagine that not long after such a change were made nation-wide, you'd see a movement to eliminate marriage benefits entirely. Pretty much for exactly the reasons I've outlined. If they don't serve as an incentive to get straight couples to marry before producing children together, then there's not much reason to have them at all. Marriage already includes all the contracts a couple could want or need. These benefits are just "extras" the rest of us give to married couples. As we extend the criteria for receiving them, the justification for having them at all will fade away.

The perception will grow that since marriage is no longer (or as many are arguing now, never was) about procreation, then there's no reason to have any benefits clearly connected to child production or child raising in the benefits. There will be a movement to shift more benefits to anyone who is caring for a dependent regardless of marital status. Afterall, why discriminate against *how* a child came to be, right? We shouldn't penalize kids born to single mothers, so let's just give them the benefits and leave marriage out of it.


Do you see how that over time results in a reduction of marriage and an increase in single mothers? Is that "good" for society? I think not. Extending marriage benefits to gay couples is the camels nose. The camel will soon follow. Some of us see this. Unfortunately, too many people only see the immediate cause in front of them. And when the change I talk about eventually happen (decades from now most likely), none of them will connect the two. It'll seem quite reasonable to do each step along the way, in fact.


That's why it's a problem.

I think it, ironically, might be religious. From my meagre study of Aquinas and religion in politics, I've heard a very similar procreative argument before and we read Jerry Falwell in that class. My memory is very fuzzy, but I think that the second time I'd ever heard that argument (the first was gbaji) might be from Jerry Falwell. At any rate, I did certainly read one argument in that class which laid forth the procreative argument, and given the odds in a class on religion and politics... it was probably religious.


That also

Edited, Jul 15th 2009 2:45am by Pensive

As I explained last time, as I am operating under your premise. You have a contradiction in it, economically. Marriage has FAILED HORRIBLY to contain the bane of children on society. They are running amok, orphans, housed in group homes which you are paying for!

If More homosexuals could marry, more homosexuals could adopt, many of them want to already, an those federal benefit of marriage might encourage them to raise adopted children in do it and provide family units to encourage good child growth, lessening both your tax contributions as well as the damage to society by unstable children.

QED

Then you through in some cause and effect argument.

Fine. Ban on children, no more cause? No more effect to contain, unless.
20% of the nations women are abducted and held at breeding facilities, with 20% of the nations men sent to care for them. They are treated very well, but they breed their entire lives and provide babies. There will never be orphans again. Families in the real world apply for babies to raise and have them delivered. Solution done.

Or! Mandatory Abortion.
Pregnant? Don't have a husband? You will abort your baby, sorry.

Or... you could stop this ridiculous notion that you can eliminate single mother parenting, single father parenting, joint divorce custody, abandonment, and however many other ways children get raised in poor ways through the nuclear goddamned family alone.


Sure, and I'll welcome it, when all relationships can be recognized by the state

Edited, Jul 15th 2009 3:22am by Pensive

No he doesn't.

And you get the benefits even if you haven't had a child. Do you see how you're barking up the wrong tree? There is only one consistency with the current criteria for the benefits. They are granted to every single couple who *might* be able to procreate if they have sex.

It's not about whether you have children already. Thus, "when" you have the child is irrelevant. Even "whether" you have a child is irrelevant.



Sigh. I never said it did. Typical of the backwards approach I keep seeing on this forum. You're targeting the symptom and not the cause. The symptom is single mothers on the street. The cause is women having children without being married to the guy who got them knocked up.

It's not about getting or keeping single mothers "off the streets". It's about having fewer single mothers in the first place. This same argument applies to Pensive as well. The objective is to reduce the rate at which this happens. And the fact that in the last half century, the liberals in this country have managed to create government programs which provide aid to single mothers, resulting in an increase in single mothers should not mean that we should make things even worse by eliminating or weakening the only counter-incentive we have.

We're half way down the slippery slope and you're all insisting that since we've already got so many women having children on their own, well... I guess there's just nothing we can do, so there's no reason to even try to prevent that from happening. Nope. Let's just provide more assistance to those who make these bad choices. Cause, just like the idiots of the last half century, we can't grasp that government funding creates incentive to meet the criteria for the funding.


If you guys want to make an argument that eliminating assistance to single women with dependents would help increase the rate at which folks get married, I'd agree 100%. But in this particular discussion, we're looking at the marriage benefits. I agree that they end up competing (as in my earlier example) against the benefits government grants to women for being single. Sad, but I didn't make those laws. The political party most of you vote for consistently did. So, if this is a problem, then take it up with yourselves.



How is *not* helping them a penalty? It's amazing how often this ridiculous bit of illogic ends out being the base of so many arguments. The idea that not giving something to someone is identical to taking that thing away is rampant in liberal thought. It's also absolutely false, but that apparently never stops you guys from basing your arguments upon it.

Funny thing is that I was being sarcastic and expressing how liberal silliness would play out. Apparently, I was spot on...



No. They should think a bit longer and harder before having sex with someone. See. If you reduce the consequences of people's actions, they will change their behavior. Something which was risky and avoided will be done more often. In this case, it means that we end up with more women getting knocked up without being married to the guy who got them pregnant. And once in that situation, the choice to become a single mother is often the best one out of a list.

I'm not saying she should be forced into a loveless marriage. However, if she's faced with either that or relying on her family to support her and child, she might just pick her partners a little bit better. Gee. That would be tragic. Oh wait! It wouldn't. It would be "good". More men involved in the raising of their children. Fewer children raised in poverty. Fewer children joining gangs, dropping out of school, and selling dope on the streets. More children getting good education and making something of themselves.


Gee. That would just be a disaster. And all we have to do to accomplish this is *not* spend money! Wow... Where do we sign up?



Yes, it is. I've stated repeatedly that I would be more than willing to eliminate every single government funded or mandated benefit to married couples if at the same time we eliminated all forms of welfare and aid to people with dependents. Straight across. Let's do it! What are we waiting for?



Yes they are. This is one of the most misused fallacies in existence. A slippery slope is *only* invalid if the user cannot show how the end point being claimed will reasonably result from the proposed choice at hand. In all other cases, it is a valid argument.

And lets face it. The number of times slippery slope arguments come true is roughly equal to the number of times someone insists that the argument being used is fallacious because it's a "slippery slope!". As I said earlier: We're already halfway down the slope. We've already massively reduced the effectiveness of the marriage incentive by creating so many competing programs to help single parents. Pensive mentioned this exact thing.

So yeah. This will happen.



I'll stop using them when even a small percentage of conservative slippery slope predictions stop coming true. Want me to go through a list? It's pretty amazing how consistently the left in this country proposes some change, conservatives say "Don't do that, or <bad thing> will happen!", the get a chorus of "slippery slope!", "Fear monger!", and "Bigot!" responses, we do the change, and exactly what they predicted would happen happens. Conservatives are pretty much batting a thousand if we look at major social programs over the last 50 years, and compare what conservatives predicted would happen to what actually happened.

Liberals, on the other hand, are batting very close to zero. How's that whole "helping African Americans succeed" working out? How exactly are we doing on ending poverty? Education programs working too? We can pretty much chart the rate at which any given social area in this country has gotten worse by looking at the proportion of government funds and attention it has received. At some point, a sane and rational person might conclude that the social ideas you've all been sold on all your life just plain don't work...





Yes. It really is frustrating when you're always the smartest person in the room. But it's a burden I bear... ;)

Well what the fuck do you keep bringing them up for then? Stop it.







Sorry. In the future I'll pretend other gay marriage threads never happened so you can act as though the stupid **** you said never happened.

Not allowing gay marriage is like cosmetic companies creating different tones of foundation, guys. Oh, and the government never did anything to not allow gay marriage. True story!



Cite, with proof that it's a result of "liberal" legislation.

But it's obvious!

Oh, ok, you have nothing then. Carry on.



No such thing exists.



It's always entertaining when you make up responses and arguments and then respond to them as though you know our opinion already. Please, continue.



See, you always almost do something intelligent, and then you go with this "HA! LIBERAL! GOTCHA!" mentality that just makes you look like a fucking child.

Why you expect us to take you seriously when you can't even debate the issue without dismissing it as liberal nonsense is beyond me. Guess what, ******** I'm not all that liberal.



See, this is a shining example of how you ignore reality. People should think long and hard before having sex with someone. People should think long and hard before joining gangs. People should think long and hard before starting addictive narcotics. People should think long and hard before killing someone else. People should think long and hard before they drop out of school.

They don't. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance. I understand that it's easy to just assume that everyone else should be just as thoughtful and intelligent as you are, but that's often not essentially never the case.



God damn that stupid ***** for not seeing that her husband would become an alcoholic after she shat that baby out!



Good to see you're still operating in some alternate reality. What's it like?



Which you can't other than "IT WILL GUYS! Promise me. I'm always right because I'm sooooo smart."



They were created because people already weren't getting married! Would you rather they just died with their children on the streets? Would you rather that the woman suffer because the ******* who said he'd marry her ran off and never pays child support? Would you rather have the government pay for an ad campiagn of "Hay guyz! U shud rly mary lolz"?

Want me to go through a list?

Please do. With non-partisan proof for each aspect where the social problem hasn't been alleviated somewhat by the program put in place.

Yes. It really is frustrating when you're always the smartest person in the room. But it's a burden I bear... ;)

You're like the second coming with that huge cross you're carrying.

ITT: CBD is amazing.