Sunday, June 22, 2008

One more try...

Joshua Rosenau at the National Center for Science Education responds to my post asking the question, if the relationships of homosexuals are already stable then why do we need marriage to stabilize them in a recent post at his blog Thoughts from Kansas:

Martin Cothran, blogger for the Disco. Inst., opposes gay marriage, and wonders:

If their relationships are already stable, then why do they need to be stabilized?
Compelling logic. Clearly, marriage is useless.

Of course, evidence suggests that marriage actually does have a stabilizing effect on people. And gay people, it turns out, are people, too.

Which, of course, completely misses my point. I never said that marriage does not have a stabilizing affect on people. In fact, I assumed it in the point I was making. And the point I was making is that gays want to have it both ways in their PR campaigns: they first take umbrage if anyone tries to assert that they are overly promiscuous and then they turn around and argue that they need marriage in order to be less promiscuous.

Yes gay people are people too. So maybe we could restate the question for Rosenau and see if we can break through the logical firewall he seems to have set in his mental system settings: "If the relationships of gay people are already stable then why do we need marriage to stabilize them?"

We'll see what happens, but we're not hopeful

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"If the relationships of gay people are already stable then why do we need marriage to stabilize them?"

Mr Cothran makes a good point. Perhaps gay relationships have not been studied enough to answer this question. Presumably it has already been established that heterosexual relationships need the stabilising influence of the marriage ceremony. Which raises an intriguing thought: If gay relationships are stable but heterosexual ones need to be reinforced by marriage, which is truly the more natural state of affairs?

PS I am willing to bet $100 that there will be a lower divorce rate among gays currently getting married than among heterosexuals currently getting married.

j a higginbotham

Martin Cothran said...

Okay, let me state the logic of my point a little more clearly. I'll just state it in the form of a classical dilemma:

If homosexual relationships are stable, then there is need for marriage to stabilize them; if homosexual relationships are not stable, then gay rights groups should not falsely claim they are.

Homosexual relationships are either stable, or they are not.

Therefore, either there is no need for marriage to stabilize homosexual relationships or gay rights groups should not falsely claim that homosexual relationships are stable when they are not.

Gay rights groups, in other words, want to have it both ways: on the one hand they want to say their relationships are stable, on the other hand they want to say they need marriage to make them stable.

Whether homosexual relationships are stable or not--or whether they need marriage to make them stable is not the point. The point is you can't have it both ways.

Anonymous said...

The logic of Mr Cothran's post is quite clear. Unfortunately he seems to have latched upon a superficial contradiction without considering the meanings of the remarks and thereby misapplied logic.
If homosexual relationships are stable, then there is need for marriage to stabilize them; if homosexual relationships are not stable, then gay rights groups should not falsely claim they are.
The above assumes that something (in this case, homosexual relationships) can only be "stable" or "unstable" and that there are no degrees of stability.

Consider a bridge. It might be defined as stable for pedestrian or automotive traffic but not for semi-trailers. Or a bridge might be considered stable for all forms of vehicular traffic but only capable of withstanding earthquakes up to magnitude 6.5. If a competent engineering firm adds more reinforcing girders and straps, the bridge will be able to withstand a stronger quake. But does that mean it was unstable before?

And what does the phrase "homosexual relationships are stable" even mean? How is "stable" in this usage defined? One couple married in California had been together for over 50 years. Is that judged a stable or unstable relationship? What does the length of that relationship have to do with the stability of other relationships? How can all relationships be classified by one adjective? Th inappropriateness of the logic above can be seen by applying it to heterosexual relationships. If heterosexual relationships are stable, there is no need for marriage to stabilize them. I certainly don't think most would agree with that statement.

One solution would be to separate legal marriages (rename them civil unions or limited partnerships or something) from religious marriages, so that anyone can enjoy the advantages of the present civil/religious hybrid without offending the religious views of anyone.

So there is no simple black and white definition of "stable" and consequently there can be confusion in interpreting statements. I wish there was an easy way to avoid such conflicts. Mr Cothran also seems to appreciate clear cut scenarios. Logic, as a form of math, is very rigid and unambiguous. Latin is a fixed, non-changing language. Science, which Mr Cothran has stated should not be in the best curriculum, is constantly in flux, sloppy, and imprecise.


jah