When I read studies like this, one of the first things I like to do is look around for critiques.
On conservative commentary website Stream.org, statistician William M. Briggs (who, take it for what it's worth, opposes same-sex marriage) offers a critique of the study's methodology and conclusion, as well as the conclusion that the study expressly does not make, but that the headlines have made:
> A weighted 8.6% to a weighted 8%, they say. This is a 7% reduction, all right, but a minor tweak in the actual weighted number. The numbers are weighted averages across several states and the result of a statistical model called a linear regression. The 0.6 drop is not observed, but is the output from a model.
> The numbers within states is anything but straightforward (the authors provide graphs). For instance, some states show reported suicide attempts increasing after gmarriage (New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, for example). The graphs also indicate a general decline in rates before gmarriage and continuing afterwards (see their Fig. 3).
> putting Ebola in the model works equally well with gmarriage to explain the data. So do the disasters of those crashing Malaysian airliners, or the fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. So does the 2014 Winter Olympics!
One other point that Briggs makes only indirectly, but bears mentioning, is that measuring the number of self-reported unsuccessful suicide attempts only provides us with part of the picture; we can't make any firm conclusions about what its rise or fall says about suicide prevention unless we also know the number of _successful_ suicide attempts. For instance, it might be the case that some suicide prevention factor reduces the likelihood that any given suicide attempt is successful. Maybe hospitals have gotten better at reducing the mortality rate of intentional overdoses. In such a case, the rate of suicide attempts might remain relatively flat, but the rate of unsuccessful suicide attempts would rise, and the rate of successful suicide attempts would fall.
Whether or not you agree with same sex marriage (I myself am libertarian) this comment is well thought out and informative. I don't see why it was downvoted.
Statistical noise is always present, so of course suicide among GSM teens did not uniformly drop.
The JAMA study used different years for different states, as same-sex marriage became legal in different states at different times. His criticism about "any event in 2014 explains this drop in suicide" is malformed.
This is a fair point, although it should be noted that 19 states legalized gay marriage in 2014 compared with only 16 states in any of the prior years examined. And 8 of those 16 were in 2013. So, 27 out of 35 states examined legalized same-sex marriage either in 2014 or within one year prior. I would be interested to learn just how much the data from those other 8 states affect the weighted average the authors used to identify the association.
By the way, if you look at the accompanying figure 2 and figure 3 in the JAMA article, you will see just how noisy the data is for both Wave 1 and Wave 2 states, as well as the relative lack of post-2014 data points. Honestly, just looking at those two charts should be enough to give you a healthy skepticism about the conclusion, whatever your ideological views.
Have you looked at the main plots? They're terribly noisy. And because of the difference-in-difference design, a pretty strong covariate for adult suicide (economy / labour participation) is not taken into account.
Take perspective of the modeller. What would be the first circle of influence in teen suicide? Probably direct social interactions (family, peers). Second circle? More abstract things like succes in school, relationships, the absence of bullying. For a regulatory change to have a meaningfull and measurable effect on suicides (literally the most drastic step available) is hard on first sight.
And then the step to research design. How would one expect to find a determinating factor by a DiD-design with only some regulatory measure as an explanatory factor?
For me, after looking into this study. First explain me the state by state differences in teen suicides over time adequately, before you start explaining the effect of gay marriage on teen suicides.
I think it's rather desperate to introduce to very different things and conclude that one causes the other.
Along with 'gay marriage', 'gay acceptance' has been on the rise in general. Social interventions, heck, social media and the internet (i.e people can form like minded networks etc..).
Even a small change in policing and social policy could cause this. A bullying program.
There are so many things that could 'cause' a tiny drop in teen suicide.
> > > putting Ebola in the model works equally well with gmarriage to explain the data. So do the disasters of those crashing Malaysian airliners, or the fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. So does the 2014 Winter Olympics!
Perhaps. But we know there's a correlation between being gay and dying by suicide. We know that gay people are more likely to die by suicide than straight people.
Suicide is a complex phenomena and we should avoid simplistic reasoning, but anything that makes life easier for people to be gay is likely to reduce the numbers of death by suicide of gay people.
EDIT: I don't normally comment on downvotes, but this post is getting lots and I'm a it confused about why.
> Negative attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people put these youth at increased risk for experiences with violence, compared with other students.1 Violence can include behaviors such as bullying, teasing, harassment, physical assault, and suicide-related behaviors.
[...]
> LGBTQ youth are also at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, suicide attempts, and suicide. A nationally representative study of adolescents in grades 7–12 found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide as their heterosexual peers.3 More studies are needed to better understand the risks for suicide among transgender youth. However, one study with 55 transgender youth found that about 25% reported suicide attempts.4
The association between same-sex marriage legalization and reduction in suicide attempts was also significant for teens who identified as sexual minorities. For this subgroup, there was a 14-percent relative reduction in suicide attempts after the passage of same-sex marriage laws.
So it would seem that the drop was more pronounced among gay people.
Isn't that like reading a crackpot's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, pointing out a mistake, and him arguing "Andrew Wiles already proved this theorem so why are you arguing against it?"
Hmm. In this example the flaws listed are "we don't know there's a correlation between death by suicide and being gay" -- but we do know that, and we have good evidence for it.
In this particular example the linked blog post is not saying "hey, this study is flawed", but is saying "I hate gay people and I don't want them to think that their sham marriage is in anyway equivalent to my real marriage". It's pretty clear that the linked post is only trying to find flaw with this study because they disagree with it; if you presented something with exactly the same flaws but showing A implies NotB they'd be praising it as good quality science that supports their point.
EDIT: a quote from the linked post:
>> Think about what the authors are implying: that the mere presence of gmarriage — government-defined marriage, as opposed to marriage defined by reality — stops teens from reporting suicide attempts.
>> This is among all teens, mind you, and not just the minority reporting same-sex attraction or other non-biologically oriented sexual desires. The authors claim the effect was greater in the sexual minority.
The author is clearly, unambiguously, a bigot looking to smear a study. He's not engaged in honest science.
In your first paragraph, you're saying that the critique claims, in essence, "We don't know there's a correlation between death by suicide and being gay," and you're saying that claim is false, because there is evidence that suicide rates among gay people are higher than the general population. But that's not what the critique is claiming. What it's claiming is that this JAMA study, in particular, fails to establish the association it claims to establish.
And in your second paragraph, you're saying that the critique is not saying, "Hey, this study is flawed," but is saying, "I hate gay people and I don't want them to think that their sham marriage is in anyway equivalent to my real marriage." Briggs makes no secret of the fact that he rejects same-sex marriage, but the vast majority of his post is devoted to flaws in the study, not to his own personal objections to same-sex marraige, and although his ideological views probably are a motivating factor for his scrutiny of the study, that doesn't necessarily invalidate the points he makes.
For what it's worth, Briggs has written several critiques of several studies. Sometimes the studies challenge his religious views, but not always. His critiques appear to be motivated more by the facts that (1) nearly all studies determine their value by whether they can show p-values less than an arbitrary threshold, and (2) nearly all studies say they measure something, when in fact they measure a proxy.
> Sometimes the studies challenge his religious views, but not always
Has he ever made similar points about studies that support his anti-gay marriage views? or his climate sceptic views? It should be really easy for him to find bad science among climate sceptics - has he ever written about that?
I thought I had read a blog post by him saying, effectively, that skeptics should hold themselves to a higher standard than they currently do. But after a few minutes of searching, I can't find it, and it's possible that I'm simply thinking of a different blogger.
As far as I can tell, Briggs is Catholic, and he does mock Catholic officials -- including the Pope -- occasionally.
He is trying to say that the fact the conclusions are true does not mean the reasoning behind it is.
For example, I can say that hell is at the center of the Earth, and that's why it's hot.
It is indeed hot, but it is not due to hell at all.
In the context of this article, I don't think anyone is contesting that gay people are more likely to kill themselves, or that gay marriage is not an improvement.
However, the quality of this specific study apparently can be doubted, and the fact that one agree with the conclusion does not mean we should be lenient on the quality of the math behind it
On reading the paragraph about limitations, my first thought was maybe by making this alternative family structure legal, more kids talked openly about it, got picked on more as a result, and were more likely to complete a suicide attempt. Hey, it's just one possible explanation for a "decline" in attempts when they have no data on completions.
I hate studies that ignore missing data by saying it's not relevant.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I find it really bizarre that a site which says it's "championing freedom, smaller government" is so stridently against same-sex marriage.
I can only conclude that some people have a radically different idea of "freedom" and "smaller government" than I do.
Bringing it back to the original topic a bit, it's sad that people's reactions are so predictable. People in favor of same-sex marriage think this study is great. People who oppose it think it sucks. How boring! Show me someone in favor of same-sex marriage who thinks this study is terrible, or someone against who thinks the study is really good.
"Freedom" means, The freedom to harm others, the freedom to be the undisputed top of the political and social food chain, and the freedom to maintain that position at any cost.
They want the freedom to limit the freedom of others. They see no problem with that at all.
They're not arguing that government should get out of the marriage business. I've seen that sentiment before and it's totally consistent. I might even agree with it. But these people here are arguing stridently for government-endorsed traditional marriage, and against same-sex marriage, all while having that tagline at the bottom of every page.
Nation-States life is tied to babies and for now only Heteros make babies, even the gay babies. So, there is inherent interest for any Nation state to promote hetero sex and by its extension hetero-marriages (without relying on government funding for childcare).
What about modern medical technology? how many people of the 3,978,497 of people born in US in year 2015 were born out of this modern technology ? Now if we extend that to world, that is hundreds of millions of babies.
My comment was neutral about gay marriage. I was trying to tie the relationship between demographics and Nation-States and why hetero-sex is mostly overlook but important ingredient.
May be in the future each of us get to have clone armies and designer babies, I do not know. But to pretend Sexuality and its outcomes have no bearing in Life and Destiny of a Nation to me is laughable.
How does raping someone – at least I take that to be what you mean by drugging someone into having sex against their preference – relate to a subsidy designed to incentivize couples to willingly have (and care for) children?
Thanks for the clarification. Now, if they are already willing to do it without government incentive, what does expanding the subsidy to include them add?
To be clear, I'm not sure it is an effective subsidy to begin with, but that's a moot point as far as this discussion goes.
Well sure, who doesn't like getting subsidies? That doesn't mean it is effective for a government to invent subsidies for everyone. There has to be a desired outcome, even if in the real world it falls short or brings many unintended consequences. And I think there are lots of good reasons to eliminate this subsidy entirely, but that's a whole other discussion.
What's the goal? If it's to promote having children, then you should just subsidize having children. If for some reason you really want to subsidize children through marriage, then you should stop subsidizing marriages involving people who can't or won't have children.
If there's some perceived benefit in legal recognition of a romantic union, then there's no reason to exclude same-sex unions.
Basically, there are a few consistent positions:
1. Children are important. Outcome: either incentivize children, or incentivize fertile couples.
2. Romantic unions are important. Outcome: legally recognize all of them, including same-sex couples.
3. Freedom and small government is important. Outcome: stop recognizing marriage and let people handle it privately.
4. Religion is important. Outcome: legally recognize marriage under something like the rules of your religion.
We can argue for and against the merits of these individual possibilities, but what I can't understand is when someone uses an argument for #1 (as the other commenter here is) or #2 (as the site being discussed is) but somehow ends up with the outcome from #4.
> you should stop subsidizing marriages involving people who can't or won't have children.
Well, that is what the other commenter is arguing that we already do, at least in theory. The laws are from a different time, so there are many modern-day loopholes for sure, but when you look at the conditions at the time when the laws were enacted marriage would be essentially limited to those who could (to the best of their knowledge) and were willing to have children, intended to create an environment to make having children amiable.
Even divorce law is predicated on the idea that the spouse will stay home to take care of the children. Since that leaves one member of the household without an income for many years, in the event of a dissolution of the partnership one member will be left out in the cold, so to speak, so we created rules to share the proceeds gained in the process to ensure that each party is compensated for their efforts.
I think we can find all kinds of arguments as to why that is flawed in 2017, but if we just stick to the assumption that the subsidy provides exactly the expected outcome: Why does it need to change at all?
You are absolutely right. We shouldn't make assumptions. We should be looking at the data to see what we value we really are getting for the subsidy.
But, since nobody seems to be incorporating that data in the discussion, I'm not sure we can really fault the other commenter for believing that we are getting the desired results out of the existing subsidies. The results haven't shown up as a clear negative with respect to the intended outcome, so it is natural to assume, without better information, that it is working just fine. And, as you said, if it is working just fine there is no need for change.
Absolutely, more data is needed in this discussion to evaluate the effectiveness of what we have and to compare against alternatives. But to outright dismiss the unmeasured effectiveness of a subsidy because a handful of people have proven the willingness to do the same without that subsidy seems to be the only silly part of this discussion.
If you want to incentivise increased reproductive rates, offer appropriate social welfare and/or tax incentives, and improve availability of childcare, education, family-appropriate accommodation, etc. Some countries, notably Singapore, do this. Legalising same-sex marriage is unlikely to affect reproduction one way or another.
This article is US-centric, and the US does not have a problematic low reproductive rate (total fertility rate of 1.9), so I fail to see the relevance.
How does banning same-sex marriage adversely impact the rate of birth amongst heterosexuals? And if banning marriages that can't result in babies were a way to increase birthrate, then why are heterosexual people who cannot have babies (post-menopausal women, men who've had vasectomies) allowed to get married?
By that logic it should be illegal to marry if you are post-menopausal, infertile, a carrier of a genetic disease, or openly express an interest to remain child-free.
Gay families can and do raise children. Being unable to naturally produce children doesn't preclude raising children.
My mother-in-law is gay. When she was a young adult, before she came out, she got married and had children because "that's what you did" and she didn't have the courage to go against what was expected of her.
She, however, was incredibly miserable. Her distress with being gay and married to a man was a huge contributor to her drug and alcohol addition at that time. As a result her children didn't have a good family life.
Finally she was distressed enough to divorce my father-in-law and come out.
She's now married to a woman, totally sober, much healthier (she dropped over 100 pounds), and very happy.
Here are two recent examples where government meddling -- one in healthcare, one in marriage -- ended up infringing on religious liberty.
Healthcare: The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charitable organization that also offers healthcare for women, were required by the Affordable Care Act to provide contraception as part of their services. This infringed on the religious liberty of practicing Catholics. Nonetheless, the federal government fined the Little Sisters of the Poor for not providing a service the Catholic Church considers immoral. Million of dollars in lawyer fees later, the Supreme Court finally reversed the decision [0].
Marriage: A gay couple asked a Jack Phillips, a Christian baker and owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, to make the wedding cake for their upcoming gay marriage ceremony. The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths all forbid homosexuality; Philips asked the couple to take their business elsewhere. But the couple took Phillips to court and the court ruled that Phillips and his staff were required to break their moral convictions and were ordered take re-education classes and file quarterly compliance reports for two years [1].
He specifically asked about same-sex marriage. These examples involve something else - the first one is about requirements for medical insurance, the second is about anti-discrimination laws.
>> "the second is about anti-discrimination laws."
You are merely changing the language to avoid admitting the reality of a government infringing on religious liberty.
The government forcing religious people to go against their religion is infringement of religious liberty. Forcing those religious people to undergo government re-education classes is Stalinesque.
The founders of the US saw this potential abuse; it's why religious liberty is protected as the first right in the Bill of Rights.
And on a broader point, this is why we fight for small government: a large, powerful government is a bastion for tyranny. And the religious are merely the canary in the coal mine.
Perhaps the left will recognize this wisdom after President Trump issues executive orders overturning all that the left holds dear.
It's pretty clear this person has gotten themselves into a logic box they can't get out of. All discussion has to point to evidence for their point of view, or it's discounted or ignored.
I gave you an example of how same-sex marriage can, and has, infringed on religious liberty.
You dismissed it as pertaining to anti-discrimination laws, even though it specifically was caused by same-sex marriage laws and involved a dispute about religious freedoms in response to those laws.
Both of those examples are infact not examples of infringement.
Imagine a world in which any healthcare provider could arbitrarily decline coverage for anything on the grounds of "religion". Have a genetic illness, sorry that's founded on the "theory" of evolution we're not going to cover you, etc. Allowing healthcare providers to pick and choose coverage is a nightmare for consumers .
Your second example is a similar issue. Allowing businesses to arbitrarily deny service to minorities (the case would have been different if the couple asked for a custom cake with a phrase the Phillips found objectionable) is not small gov or freedom of religion. It's just plain bigotry.
A citizen's freedom of religion ends when the next citizen's rights begin. If you take that away you might as well be living in a Theocracy.
>> "A citizen's freedom of religion ends when the next citizen's rights begin."
What "right" are you talking about here? The gay couple's "right" to force a particular person to bake them a cake? There is no such right.
Likewise, there's no "right" to healthcare. You can't force a doctor to perform a medical procedure on you, for example. Forcing people to provide you with their services is called slavery.
They are in fact classic examples of infringement.
It is someone's "opinion" that a private Catholic Christian charity should exercise a procedure or have a policy that is strictly against the values of that organization.
Strictly speaking, as intelligent adults here, we can rationalize that a Catholic charity does not believe in contraceptives or abortions and would not participate in these activities. They have a long held history of this practice and it wasn't made up on the spot because they felt like it, such as your example of belief in evolution leading to denial of a procedure, which very few if any people in this country hold and especially any organizations that practice in the field of medicine.
Frankly, if you have issue with private healthcare providers having a choice in their practice, you should be for a legal framework and consumer market that allows for more consumer choice instead of less so people can choose a provider that works with what they need. In a truly free market, this would be extremely easy to accomplish.
As to the baker example, it doesn't require any further explanation than this. No private individual or business has a solemn duty to respect and faithfully accommodate the practices and requests of another individual that they object too. Would a satanist be a protected individual with case to sue if they specifically wished for a Christian bakery to create a cake with Jesus impaled on a cross? Afterall, the satanist is a minority holding a minority belief.
As citizens in a free society, if we want to start rolling back division in this country, we need to dramatically improve our education, and we need to start allowing people to behave freely again, good and bad. Forcing people into associations they don't want to have causes further division ultimately.
Your second example has nothing to do with state-sanctioned same-sex marriage. The exact same court case could have happened if they had been getting "married" without making it official with the state.
That case might be an argument against laws which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexuality, but it's not an argument against same-sex marriage.
Small government conservative here, too! And it's not nearly that simple.
"Religious liberty," especially in the context of the American founders, is the freedom to practice your faith privately in whatever manner you wish, and to speak about that faith publicly without fear or persecution. It is not the freedom to impose your religious mores on other people who do not share your religion, or even those who do. To imply otherwise is to bastardize what this country was founded on and does a disservice to the founders.
If you want government to stop meddling in marriage, I hope you're fighting against tax breaks and other marriage incentives just as hard as you are against allowing two people you'll never meet to enjoy the same recognition straight people do.
>>"Religious liberty," especially in the context of the American founders, is the freedom to practice your faith privately in whatever manner you wish<<
That's a common viewpoint today, but there's nothing in the 1A about _private_ exercise of religion. The public exercise of religion is very much what is protected though there are limits when it affects others or infringes on other laws (e.g., bigamy, etc.)
Tax breaks and other marriage incentives have a legitimate function in domestic policy (e.g., it's very much in the state's interest to encourage two-parent families for raising the next generation of productive citizens). While those reasons are not always entirely uncontroversial, it's unfortunate that they are sometimes swept up into the debate around "getting government out of the marriage business."
I wish all government connections to marriage were removed. No special taxes etc etc for anyone married or not. That way there is no connection at all to marriage and government. Such an easy problem to solve, thing is people dont really want to.
It's not really an easy "problem" to solve though.
Civil (ie. government sanctioned) marriage is a social construct that most people want to, and eventually will, enter into. People enter into marriages because they want the legal framework around it. If there were no legal framework around marriage people would have to run around filling out paperwork everywhere setting up their partner as their next-of-kin.
There's also currently no non-marriage way to create the same sort of civil partnership that marriage brings, stuff like spousal privilege and unlimited inheritance just to name two. And these are things people want. If all people were interested in was religious marriage or partnership/love/companionship they either wouldn't bother getting married or wouldn't bother registering their religious marriage with the state.
Its currently impossible to get government out of marriage without also fundamentally changing our concept of marriage.
There's arguments that the "family/marriage" concept is benefited too much in society, and I'd probably agree with that.
> "Religious liberty," especially in the context of the American founders, is the freedom to practice your faith privately in whatever manner you wish,
You may be mistaking American secularism with laicism.
> It is not the freedom to impose your religious mores on other people who do not share your religion, or even those who do.
I agree. This is why the Christian concept of marriage should not be imposed on others, like Muslims and Mormons who are perfectly happy with polygamy.
Answer: We want less regulations all around so as to have a smaller government. The exception is when regulations prevent infringement on protected liberties.
For example, we support the Bill of Rights' 1st amendment which states the government shall make no infringement on the free exercise of religion. That's a regulation that protects liberty, so we support it.
And we are generally pro-life for the same reason: the Declaration of Independence states that every person has the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Since abortion snuffs out all three, we seek regulation that restricts it.
The end goal is the same: smaller government, less powerful, with less impact on individual liberty.
>We want less regulations all around so as to have a smaller government. The exception is when regulations prevent infringement on protected liberties.
So basically, bigger government. A smaller government would recuse itself and let the surrounding society punish infringement on protected liberties, which it already does quite well (example: do you, a San Francisco landlord, trust a racist renter over a non-racist one? And you know, because you looked them up on Facebook.)
Aren't you the least bit concerned with the other sectors of your society, that don't necessarily come to the same conclusions as you, taking notice and doing the same thing to yours? What happens when the definition of "every person" isn't universal ("group of cells" defined in an arbitrary way for the Left, from conception for the Right), or when different groups are split between which one is more important (parent for the Left, unborn child conceived the "right" way for the Right)?
Let's take another 1A example- freedom of speech. Both the Left and the Right have legitimate claims that exercise of certain kinds of speech damages the fabric of society. Their names and emphasis on certain parts are different, but the incidentals are otherwise identical (societies, like religions, are destabilized by blasphemy). But if we cave in and allow one subgroup's restriction, the other logically follows and every subgroup suffers- hard power is even more inflexible than an opposing subgroup's view of you/r group.
So subsocities agree to disarmament; one group gives up the authority to ban stuff culturally justifiable in areas held by a different group, and vice versa. This is the other purpose of the Bill of Rights- all groups, including yours, need protection from the society around them. The fact that there's an amendment ensuring that groups can defend themselves with force if things really go wrong should speak volumes about how important and valuable that treaty is.
The hypocrisy of "small government" conservatives in this regard is that they ostensibly want the government to get out of marriage, indeed a socio-religious ceremony, but they don't want the government to stop giving legal and taxational benefits to marriage.
I agree, the government should get out of marriage, but that also necessarily implies that it gets no special legal recognition, and would mean that gay people could also get married.
It's not hypocritical to want a small government and also want less taxation. These are harmonious goals.
Governments may wish to encourage male-female marriage (moms & dads => children and healthy environment => productive families => civilization). If that means less taxation for families, and thus a smaller and less powerful government, all the better.
You're right, but the end result is the same, and is ultimately good: encourage male-female marriages, encourage stable homes for raising families, less taxation, and a smaller government.
Even though I don't agree with everything you're saying w.r.t government incentivization of particular social structures, I respect that it's as reasonable as any other political standpoint. However, it's objectively wrong to claim that such policies are in any way "small government"; you're just centrally planning the social structure instead of the economic structure. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely possible that this is a good idea. However, it's pretty much the definition of "big government".
I cannot have any respect for that position whatsoever until the "small government" conservatives are lobbying to get government out of straight marriage as well. Until then, it's a bunch of bigots who are too timid to own up to their bigotry.
I like the idea of decriminalising marriage, but it does mean that anyone can define marriage however they want. This brings same sex/different sex marriage into parity, if you do it according to the principles you espouse. So it still doesn't make sense.
I don't know what you're referring to, they do tell you all the time. "It's unnatural!", is probably the most common argument against same-sex marriage, and can only refer to the "natural" marriage depicted in the bible (or koran, or whatever, you get the point).
Of course they also invent other reasons, and bend the facts to fit their views. But everybody does that, it's just human nature.
In my brief perusal of the site's articles on marriage, I didn't see any religious arguments put forth.
Please understand, I'm not attempting to make a general argument about every single person opposed to same-sex marriage. I'm specifically discussing the attitudes of stream.org, and by extension other people who hold a similar "freedom, small government, and no same-sex marriage" attitude.
Probably because the people who buy into these types of arguments are not the ones they're trying to persuade? In any case, they make their values rather clear[0].
Yes, they make their values clear. And those values are clearly contradictory.
"Free societies protect private property. They allow their citizens to participate in the political process, to make basic economic choices, to exercise virtue and charity and to freely exercise their religious faith."
"Evil is not just in our imaginations. We can’t eradicate it with the right amount of social engineering or positive thinking."
"The state does not determine what marriage and family are, but it must recognize them. We should oppose political attempts to redefine marriage, which are wars against the creation itself."
If they think official recognition of only "traditional" marriage is more important than the other stuff, then fine, but they should stop pretending that they're all about freedom.
The possible answer to your view/question could be that there is a difference between "liberty" as a goal and "libertinism".
Liberty in this sense as used by the site you mention, includes certain responsibilities, while the libertine is unrestrained or free of responsibility.
I don't understand how that answers it. How does that make "government oversight of marriage in a way that restricts who can get married" consistent with "freedom" and "smaller government"?
I don't say this is my perspective, but I believe that the authors of the site would point to this short speech by Alan Keyes as a quick explanation... or at least, agree with it. Sorry for bad formatting, I am on my phone. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KrD8zvCUtWc
That might explain why one would consider "marriage" to only be between a man and a woman, but it doesn't do anything to explain how legally enforcing that is somehow compatible with "freedom" and "smaller government."
I think the final answer to your question might be that they're going to argue you in circles using irrelevant tangents until you get tired and stop challenging them.
>I can only conclude that some people have a radically different idea of "freedom" and "smaller government" than I do.
Smaller government would be a government that does less stuff, grants status to fewer people, etc. Marriage is a legal construct that allows a couple to receive special status from the state. Same-sex marriage advocates are in favor of the government extending the benefits of that special status to an additional class of relationships. It's consistent with small government platforms to be suspicious of such expansions, regardless of one's feelings about the independent merits of the arrangement.
Hypothetically, one could be the largest advocate of permanent same-sex coupling while simultaneously believing that the government doesn't need to expand the definition of marriage to include them under its umbrella.
Not trying to drag this out, but no one has really said this yet. Opposing the expansion of marriage is consistent because expanding government is always met with suspicion by small government advocates.
Sure, one could be opposed to extending the legal definition of marriage based on small-government principles, but then consistency would also demand that one be opposed to legal recognition of marriage at all. That is manifestly not the case for this site or many others.
>Sure, one could be opposed to extending the legal definition of marriage based on small-government principles, but then consistency would also demand that one be opposed to legal recognition of marriage at all.
No, consistency wouldn't demand that. Small government people are not automatically "no government" people. I'm saying it's natural for them to be skeptical of the expansion of services to cover new arrangements. That's government growth; small government people are likely to take a default dubious position for almost all forms of government growth/expansion, but that doesn't mean they have to oppose every function the government currently performs. That'd make them anarchists, not conservatives.
So when someone says "I want to expand a government-granted status to a new thing", the natural small government reaction is "You better have a very compelling case, because we hate the words 'expand a government-granted status'".
Going beyond this, we get into an argument on the details of same-sex marriage, and this is neither the time nor the place for that, but the point is that it is conventional for a small government proponent to view proposals to expand a longstanding legal tradition with suspicion, without necessarily requiring them to be hostile to that legal tradition as it stands. Pretending like this doesn't make sense is creating a false dichotomy. The choice doesn't have to be between "same-sex marriage" or "no marriage" to be internally consistent.
I'm not saying they must be opposed to every government function. I'm just saying that there is no logical "small government" reason to be opposed to growing the legal definition of marriage but in favor of having a legal definition of marriage.
Your argument is basically that people tend to be more skeptical of change than of the status quo. Which is absolutely true, but it's not reason, it's just inertia.
"Small government" people are as prone to this mental shortcut as anyone, but that doesn't make it consistent or reasonable, it just makes it human.
>Your argument is basically that people tend to be more skeptical of change than of the status quo. Which is absolutely true, but it's not reason, it's just inertia.
We can't get into the details without this turning into a debate on same-sex marriage in general, but my point is that small government people are extra skeptical of changes that expand the government. More skeptical than the average person, because beyond simple inertia, there is an ideology that says the government should be limited and that growth should be opposed unless a compelling interest can be shown. That ideology must be satisfied to get small government people on board.
When I read statistics, I consider the source and it's probable motivations. Pediatrics is a journal published by the American Medical Association. In general, I hold the belief that it publishes material in furtherance of medical science and public health policies which are intended to produce positive medical outcomes subject to normal variation in human ethics and fallibility. Maybe this is a liberal or conservative or marxist or capitalist political position, I can't tell. Maybe it's agenda is secret. Maybe it's not.
Any statistical study can be criticized as 'only being likely, not being certain.' Briggs does not provide contrary epidemiological evidence. His critique is based on the possibility of alternative explanation inherent in all statistical studies. At best there's a failure to understand the epistemological character of empirical knowledge.
>Pediatrics is a journal published by the American Medical Association. In general, I hold the belief that it publishes material in furtherance of medical science and public health policies which are intended to produce positive medical outcomes subject to normal variation in human ethics and fallibility.
Well, popular (or increasingly mainstream) results get more grants, peer acceptance and media coverage, so there's always that.
Up to the eighties those same journals would have no qualms "proving" that homosexuality is harmful, and in fact there were tons of studies to that effect.
(It works the same, but with an inverse sign, for those scientists going for the conservative audience and its, increasingly fewer, and more marginalised, grants).
So it could be more that the tide has turned, and a push to get a cute result to publish and get some publicity and good will, than an actual causation.
I assign a lower probability of non-scientific motivations leading to claims lacking evidentiary basis appearing in the journal Pediatrics and assign a higher probability to such motivations leading to claims appearing on the website which refutes the report.
I assign the same probability to errors and conflicts in regard to carrying the missions of the organizations to which humans belong. The reason I assign particular probabilities here is based on the differential between the missions of the particular organizations and the relationship of those missions to the claims and assertions of fact and conclusions.
I assign a similarly low probability to the idea that the refuting author's self interest or fallibility caused him to publish an opinion that is at odds with the current mission of the organization that published it as I do to the probability that the original author is at odds with the purposes of the institution that published his research.
How many gay teens were trying to commit suicide because they weren't allowed to get married (while in high school)? Probably very few. It might be that the kinds of states that legalized gay marriage - many of them liberal leaning - tend to also have a better social services infrastructure, which could cause a drop in teen suicide attempts. But that conclusion wouldn't have fit into the political narrative that the study's authors were clearly after.
So while the data is real, for whatever reason this study focused on seeking out a specific political conclusion from it that is tenuously linked at best. I would like to see who funded this research.
It's more than just marriage, though. Same sex marriage is seen as an acceptance thing as well. By seeing that they are treated like equals, and given the same rights, they'll feel more like they actually belong in society.
> How many gay teens were trying to commit suicide because they weren't allowed to get married (while in high school)?
We don't know, but probably "some". We can say that a state that forbids gay marriage might have schools that are less inclusive of LGBT teens, and that a state that allows gay marriage might have schools that are more inclusive of LGBT teens; and we sort of know that inclusive schools are important to reduce thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts, and deaths by suicide. (Although more research is needed.)
You mentioned funding. That's described in the paper:
> Funding/Support: Ms Raifman is supported by training grants T32AI102623 and R25MH083620 from the National Institutes of Health. Dr Austin is supported by training grants T71-MC-00009 and T76-MC-00001 from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services.
> Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funding sources played no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
But you have somewhat reinforced my point. This study draws conclusions from results for which there may be many other causal factors. The fact that a given state legalized gay marriage says that the state's lawmakers, and presumably the people that elected them, are inclusive types of people. But the implied conclusion that this study came to - that if any state wants to reduce teen suicide, it should just enshrine gay marriage in state law - is not supported by the data upon which this study is based (at least not by itself). This gets downvotes whenever it is said on HN, but in this case...correlation most certainly does not imply causation.
> How many gay teens were trying to commit suicide because they weren't allowed to get married (while in high school)
Pretty much none, I would expect. However, legalising same-sex marriage indicates a degree of acceptance by gay people.
I'm gay, and was born in 1985, in Ireland, which only formally legalised homosexuality in 1991. Employment discrimination against gay people only became illegal when I was 15 or so (thanks, EU), and we voted to legalise same-sex marriage when I was 29. As a kid, I felt that society was pretty bloody hostile to people like me, and I certainly did feel better when the employment discrimination law came in; I felt less like a second class citizen. Even though in practice it was rather rare for people to offend against this law, it signals certain societal attitudes.
The marriage referendum came late enough that it didn't really affect my self-image, but it's certainly plausible that it did for younger people.
It is interesting that the study showed a drop across all teens. I mean a drop among lgbtq teens seems pretty predictable, so I'm not surprised that the effect seems to be much greater for them.
For a lot of lgbtq teens who are having a rough time because the sliver of the world that they live in is against them at every turn, the hope that the wider world is more accepting and that they'll have equal rights and protections, that they'll just be able to live, has to provide hope to some. Same-sex marriage is just another rung in the ladder of progress and every step up that ladder is going to be the tipping point for someone to decide to live instead of checking out.
I have heard that suicide is 'contagious' in that it has 'copycat' outbreaks so if an LGBT teen doesn't attempt it, then perhaps a near suicidal non-LGBT teen in their community will also not attempt.
Perhaps the people who are the most likely to commit suicide (or be depressed enough to influence other people to commit suicide) are the people who are closet gays. There was a study which concluded closeted gay men tended to die much quicker because of HIV than openly gay men [1]. Especially the teens, they probably depend on family/parents much more than older people - so there might be a higher percentage of closeted gays in teens.
If the study had only considered only teens who came out, that could have ignored those who are depressed of being gay but not yet come out.
I just want to write quickly to say - "sample size." You can't make conclusions like the one in the title because we don't have a large enough sample size of nations that legalized same sex marriage to reliably make conclusions about how it affects suicide rates, especially when you consider other variables such as growing acceptance of homosexuality and growing awareness of things like depression.
This "comparison methodology" that the researchers presume to get around that - does not get around the problem of small sample sizes nor does it eliminate other variables such as social attitudes because the legalization of gay marriage itself is linked to changing social attitudes towards homosexuality.
I am glad that gay suicides are down, but to say it's definitely linked to gay marriage is premature and unfounded. This research seems to be pseudo science in the service of a political agenda.
The national conversation on this topic is entirely wrong. The supreme court has clearly stated a number of times over the the years (http://afer.org/blog/14-supreme-court-cases-marriage-is-a-fu...) that marriage is a fundamental right. So what we should be asking the government is if it's a fundamental right, why do we require a license to get married? Fundamental rights are not supposed to require anything to exercise since we derive them not from the government but from our mere existence as human beings.
I don't require a license to exercise my right to free speech and publish something online or create a film. I don't have to apply for a license to practice religion. Why the hell do I need permission from the government to get married, especially when such a ceremony (for most people) is a religious one? Sure, some people go to the justice of the peace to get married. But nearly everyone has a religious ceremony or they hire a neutral officiant (or have someone they know get ordained).
Historically marriage has always been a religious ceremony. If we want to deem it something else, I'm fine with that. We can still allow people to get married and not have the government be involved. Why can't we just decide who we are going to get married to, and simply fill out some paperwork to declare (not ask permission) ourselves married and notify the government of our status change.
Asking permission is obscene and defeats the entire purpose of declaring it a "fundamental right".
I also thought it was strange that the fight was over "winning" permission from the government to have a relationship rather than ditching the idea that permission should be needed.
Married people enjoy benefits in the eyes of the law.
Of course the commitment of those involved is the most important part of a marriage, but given the way our society works, the legal rights are also quite important.
I care, and you should, too. Because if we don't agree with the original intent anymore or no longer think it's valid or fits in with our current societal values and beliefs, then it should be re-examined and either modified or scrapped altogether.
Nope, definitely wasn't right in most cases. I can understand why some of it exists, though - like not being able to be forced to testify against your spouse. The two people who are married are supposed to be "one" so the extension of the fifth amendment makes sense.
But a lot of the other stuff having to do with tax benefits...I'm not too crazy about. The government is notorious for doling out tax benefits to activities they want to promote. Like the mortgage interest deduction. The government wants to promote home ownership so they created that to incentivize people buy homes. That's arguably the most popular tax break out there, but all it does is give preference to how you spend your money. Spend it on something the government approves of, and you get a tax break. Similar story with child tax credits, dependent care credits, etc. They are basically rubber stamping certain life choices. And the effect is that people who neglect or outright refuse to engage in these choices/expenditures end up paying more in taxes, all else being equal.
Civil unions would have been a better answer to that.
It's a much more culturally secular entity, and can defined better. For example, two people who live together long enough can be declared in a civil union, this way, someone can get spousal benefits even if they don't go through the process of getting married, which is more fair, I think.
Honestly, I don't really know much of anything about civil unions so maybe your right. If that's the case, I have no idea what the actual distinction is between a civil union and marriage would be then if they both confer the same benefits/rights/protections. Sounds like civil unions were just created to fill that same-sex marriage gap without pissing off the people who didn't want same-sex marriages. That way the people who are against it can still feel like marriage is just one man and one woman while gay couples can still get the legal perks. Seems like a typical political cop-out. But I could be wrong on this assumption as I don't know enough about it. That's my gut impression, though.
In the United States, they are legally different concepts, with marriage conferring more rights to the couple. Since Obergefell v. Hodges, civil unions are not really used.
Sorry, I'm not describing a jurisdiction, rather explaining how I think it should be done. I guess I didn't make that clear as it was an appendage to my earlier comment. :)
> Sounds like civil unions were just created to fill that same-sex marriage gap without pissing off the people who didn't want same-sex marriages.
In most countries which implemented them, that's broadly correct, yeah. In some countries there were also constitutional issues; in Ireland we had to change our constitution to permit same-sex marriage, for instance, so we had civil unions in the mean time.
In practice, though, there were lots of small unintended legal differences. Marriage has been around since before any modern society, and it weaves itself into laws and regulations. The campaign for equal marriage in Ireland found something like a thousand legal differences between civil unions and marriages, mostly essentially accidental. They're a mess and should be avoided if possible.
What you're describing is a common-law marriage, more or less. Most jurisdictions have abolished them, because they create administrative problems (for instance, if someone dies with money and without a will, you're basically guaranteed a messy legal procedure), but a number of US states still recognise them.
Civil unions were largely implemented as an alternative to marriage, usually only for same-sex couples, either because granting same-sex marriage was too contentious, unconstitutional, or similar reasons. And they worked like marriage; they were generally contracted just like a civil marriage. Generally, when countries permit same-sex marriage, they also remove any existing civil union laws. We had them in Ireland for a few years until the constitution was changed to allow same-sex marriage, for instance; after that the law was changed to forbid any new civil unions.
> Civil unions would have been a better answer to that.
Civil marriage already is a civil union; distinct-in-name "civil unions" are a separate (if sometimes nominally equal) civic institution to keep same-sex unions segregated-in-name from opposite-sex unions.
> For example, two people who live together long enough can be declared in a civil union, this way, someone can get spousal benefits even if they don't go through the process of getting married
"The process of getting married" basically exists to (1) document the state of union to aid in dispute resolution, (2) provide notice of an opportunity for basic review for legal barriers to the union (which now are basically consanguinity and already being in a similar union with someone else), and (3) provide clear documentation of consent from both parties to.the formation of the union.
The less formal form you describe (common-law marriage) coexisted alongside formal "registered" marriage (and, arguably, is even more linked to religion than the formal kind, since it's a direct product of the Christian doctrine that sacramental marriage is created between the partners alone, with the Church and/or State functioning as additional witnesses, not the creators of the state), but has increasingly fallen out of favor because it creates a lack of clarity about legal rights and obligations.
Those legal benefits would not be lost. You would obtain/retain those benefits once you sign the paperwork declaring yourself married. That document would be held in force with all legal consequences (benefits and ramifications) until it has been rescinded by those married or through some divorce proceeding.
So what we should be asking the government is if it's a fundamental right, why do we require a license to get married?
What you're asking for isn't permission to get married. You're asking for government recognition of your marriage.
Historically marriage has always been a religious ceremony.
No. Historically, weddings have been religious ceremony.
Marriage is bigger than the wedding. Marriage means legal changes. Being married means that someone can hold you accountable for your spouse's debts. Being married means the joint ownership of property. Being married means next of kin status. Being married means legal presumption of paternity. Being married means survivor's benefits when one spouse dies.
These are all things what are enforced by the government and THAT is why marriage licenses exist.
Want to declare your undying love for your partner and become religiously, spiritually or culturally married? Go ahead. Want the legal protections of the secular institution of marriage? You need a license.
"You're asking for government recognition of your marriage."
True, but that's only because, as another user mentioned in this thread, that there are legal benefits of being married. You also touched upon this subject.
But wanting government recognition so that the legal benefits can be had does not inherently require a license. It can and should be done through mere declaration and formal notification to the government. Our laws could absolutely be changed such that any two people (or more, I suppose, but for simplicity we'll leave it at two) could fill out paperwork and declare themselves married. As long as neither of those people have any existing/active declaration of marriage to someone else, then it would be valid and in force until otherwise revoked. This is very similar to what we have now except there is no permission needed. You are basically electing to put yourself into a specific set of rules, just like a contract, that both parties in the marriage agree to. That set of rules is known and defined and the declaration acts as an acceptance/agreement to enter it. And like a contract, it can't just be exited without the other party's explicit agreement to end it - otherwise adjudication would be required, like any contract dispute.
"No. Historically, weddings have been religious ceremony."
This seems like a odd point to make. Weddings and marriage go hand in hand. No one has a wedding without being married. But I think what you are trying to get at is the legal aspect. All of that would still exist and does not inherently require a license, as I talked about above.
"Want the legal protections of the secular institution of marriage? You need a license."
My entire point is that the government has made it that way, but it doesn't have to be that way. The current licensing requirements restrict human freedom for no apparent reason other than for the government to reject lifestyles and values that are not approved.
You don't need permission to buy a house. You just buy it, usually with a loan from a bank. Then you file paperwork with the government telling them that it was sold to you, what date you bought it, etc. Then you become the legal homeowner and it is recorded in the public record. You then receive all the legal benefits (and responsibilities) of being the homeowner. This is essentially identical to what I am saying for marriage. Why does marriage have to be any different?
As long as neither of those people have any existing/active declaration of marriage to someone else, then it would be valid and in force until otherwise revoked.
There being an ability revoke means you still need government permission. The only difference is that we would assume a default answer of "Yes" when one asks.
This seems like a odd point to make. Weddings and marriage go hand in hand.
Perhaps I was being a bit pedantic but I also wanted to emphasize that there is a very big civil/secular aspect to marriage.
> Our laws could absolutely be changed such that any two people (or more, I suppose, but for simplicity we'll leave it at two) could fill out paperwork and declare themselves married.
That's pretty much what modern civil marriage already _is_, though. The marriage can't be refused unless it's illegal for some reason (one or more participants under age or already married or something). You're essentially giving a notification; the state will reject it if there's something wrong with it; if it's kosher they'll give you an acknowledgement that they accept the notification. The "license" terminology (which isn't used everywhere) is perhaps not appropriate.
> You don't need permission to buy a house. You just buy it, usually with a loan from a bank.
Funnily enough, when I bought my house I had to sign an elaborate declaration that I was not married (or civil union'd). This is because, in Ireland, the spouse automatically has rights to the family home, and it's illegal to clandestinely buy a house on your own in an attempt to avoid this. If I hadn't signed that, my purchase of the house wouldn't have been legal, but, like a civil marriage, it's basically just a declaration that all is in order.
> Marriage means legal changes. Being married means that someone can hold you accountable for your spouse's debts. Being married means the joint ownership of property. Being married means next of kin status. Being married means legal presumption of paternity. Being married means survivor's benefits when one spouse dies.
Why do we tie those to sexual relationship status, though? The only one of those for which that makes any sense is a legal presumption of paternity, which we don't need now that we have accurate genetic tests (save for identical twins).
Why shouldn't my brother, or my best friend, or members of my yacht club, be able to hold joint ownership, or be my next of kin, or get benefits through me?
Secular marriage is just the husk of religious marriage, sapped of what actually makes a marriage marriage.
There's a perfectly reasonable point of view. I'd encourage you to champion it.
In the mean time, I'd hope you'll also champion the uniform application of fundamental rights - that our government, even if it does something you feel is wrong, doesn't also apply that something unevenly to intentionally deprive specific groups of those freedoms.
> In the mean time, I'd hope you'll also champion the uniform application of fundamental rights - that our government, even if it does something you feel is wrong, doesn't also apply that something unevenly to intentionally deprive specific groups of those freedoms.
I did — I supported civil unions when they were on the ballot in my state.
I've always wondered this. Why can't we just appoint specific people who have specific rights? Some people never get married — why can't they give a friend access to their property when they pass away? Or the ability to visit them in the hospital if they become injured?
You can do both of these things. For example, by having a will/trust to designate what happens to your property, or by creating a medical power of attorney.
You can for some of them. In many places you can leave your estate to whoever you want to (often with the provision that minor children must be adequately provided for). Though in some cases there may still be inheritance tax benefits to being married. Some countries also allow arbitrary allocation of next of kin right for the purpose of medical decisions, etc.
It's not like you're required to get married. It's just a thing that's available if people want it. I'd certainly be in favour of more devolved rights traditionally associated with marriage being available (right to nominate next of kin etc).
Why do we tie those to sexual relationship status, though?
I understand that this kind of thinking has fallen out of favor but the answer to your question is this, because the primary purpose of marriage is for having and raising children.
Of course, people who will never have children can and do get married. Of course, people who are too old to have children can get married. And now, people for whom it's biologically impossible to reproduce can get married.
Maybe it's time for a whole series of discussions about our society's future plans for marriage.
And in the US, some states don't allow you to marry certain people, like cousins. In Texas, it's criminal to have even light sexual contact with a cousin.
Marriage should be an n-party agreement with minor legal overhead, like an LLC.
> The only one of those for which that makes any sense is a legal presumption of paternity, which we don't need now that we have accurate genetic tests (save for identical twins).
The social purpose of the legal presumption of paternity (especially that that is clearly sought where that presumption is conclusive rather than rebuttable) is not affected by genetic testing.
> Secular marriage is just the husk of religious marriage, sapped of what actually makes a marriage marriage.
The original and overwhelmingly consistent part of marriage (which has always been a civic institution, whatever religious connotations it might also share in particular times and places) is unifying property rights; it is at its core an economic relationship. (Various religious models provide a variety of explanations for why one might seek such an economic relationship.)
The original and overwhelmingly consistent part of marriage is unifying property rights
Bingo. Ownership of women, ownership of children, and subsequent inheritance of possessions (the illegitimate historically don't inherit) when the owner dies. Doesn't sound very nice to us, but it's what there was. Still, progress is what it's all about; maybe we can be better people than our ancestors.
Disclaimer: I am a gay man, and my support of gay marriage has always been a gray area.
The elephant in the room that must be established here is a biological one. As much as we can hold hands and sing about the beauty of love, it remains that biologically, only a man and a woman can have children.
Historically, it is this dependency, this social contract to promise to stay together to raise one's children, that has given rise to many of the legal protections that a marriage license provides.
Now, there have been lots of heterosexual couples who marry on paper, never have kids, and for them it's largely a financial commitment (legally) and less of a social contract. I don't think same sex marriage is different in a financial regard than these examples, so I support it. But the situation gets somewhat more hairy when you consider that same sex couples may still want to raise children, and then the issue of surrogate mothers, adoption, same sex households, and all sorts of other potential legal complications come into play. How would a custody case play out with two fathers, for example?
I'm not arguing for or against same sex marriage, and I'm personally in a polyamorous relationship that's unlikely to be recognized legally in any way shape or form, so there's that as well. I just want to draw attention to some of the hidden complexities that it introduces.
> Historically, it is this dependency, this social contract to promise to stay together to raise one's children, that has given rise to many of the legal protections that a marriage license provides.
Not really. Most of the legal effects of marriage amount to legal privileges of the parties to the marriage with respect to each other, both with property and in some power-of-attorney like ways.
The big exception is the presumption (rebuttable or absolute, depending on the jurisdiction) of paternity, which may be irrelevant to same sex [0] marriages (though, in principle, even ignoring the issues under the previous footnote the absolute form and it's stability-over-biology related motivations is equally applicable to same-sex female unions as it is to opposite-sex unions.)
[0] Though given that legal sex is really a form of socially-ascribed gender and may not align with biological sex, it's also arguable that presumption of paternity is just as applicable to same (legal) sex unions as opposite sex unions as a class, though statistically less likely to be relevant to any particular same sex union, given the loose correlation between biological and legal sex.
In many parts of the world, polygamy is legal. The president of South Africa has many wives. We dare not question their 'cultural integrity'.
A libertarian argument for polygamy could be made easily, just as strongly as the one for gay marriage.
Personally, I believe marriage is a cultural institution, not a civic one. I think that the government should not be in the business of defining what marriage is - and stick to 'civil unions'. Two people can declare themselves to be married - it's their choice of identity. Others can chose to reject that if they want. The government gets involved only for legal issues, much like you're declared to be in a 'civil union' if you live together with someone for long enough, irrespective of your marriage status.
I think the model should simply switch to household-based reporting only, regardless of status, especially if the joint set of taxpayers are claiming dependents.
Each reporting adult filer in the household would link to a household TIN (like a EIN) and it would be done in aggregate. The decision to file separately would be based on the dilution of deductions as number of filers increased, relative financial independence desired, or risk of incurring the tax liabilities of others in the household.
(That would discourage roommates from filing jointly if they desired financial independence to avoid abusing the model)
> Historically marriage has always been a religious ceremony.
For most of history it's been both a religious and a civic institution (marriage is an institution, a wedding is a ceremony commemorating, or effecting depending on the model, the entrance into that institution), both in nature and effect, with the civilian/legal effect regarding property rights and inheritance arguably most often the predominant aspect; the idea that the religious and the civic domains are fundamentally separate rather than deeply linked is a relatively modern innovation, along with which came completely separate religious and civic institutions of marriage in the places where that separation between the religious and the civic domains has been given effect.
> So what we should be asking the government is if it's a fundamental right, why do we require a license to get married?
You have to ask this question in the context of legal history. In English common law, from which United States law on marriage is derived, marriage was basically a legal contract stripping women of most of their rights and transferring them to the husband: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture
And none of that matters. Fact of the matter is, we do require marriage licenses. And unless you're going to go out and campaign that the government should get out of straight marriage, trying to point this out is quite ignorant and worthless at best, and quite bigoted at worse.
> Historically marriage has always been a religious ceremony.
Common misconception, but not really true. For most of history, marriage for normal people was rarely a ceremony _at all_. The state and church usually recognised marriage to greater or lesser degrees, but most people were deemed married because they were recognised by their community as being married. Formal religious or civic marriage ceremonies were mostly for the upper classes. Gradually they spread out among classes (especially in Catholic countries), but in many places common-law marriage remained acceptable until surprisingly recently.
In England, for instance, common-law marriage wasn't abolished until 1753. It wasn't abolished in Scotland until 2006. In America, a number of states _still_ recognise common-law marriage.
And even where marriage registration has long been required for recognition, this has often been purely civil. People in some European countries, if they want a church marriage, have to get 'married' twice; the civil authorities don't recognise the church one, and this has been the case for a long time (I think since the French Revolution for France).
> Why can't we just decide who we are going to get married to, and simply fill out some paperwork to declare (not ask permission) ourselves married and notify the government of our status change.
If you live in a common-law marriage state, you can. You don't even have to file any paperwork (though it'll cause you trouble traveling if you don't get it formally recognised).
> Asking permission is obscene and defeats the entire purpose of declaring it a "fundamental right".
When you get legally married, you're not really asking permission. You're informing the state of the fact. For practical reasons, most modern countries won't recognise your marriage unless you do this (though, as above, some US states will). But you're not really asking permission as such.
The discussion should not be about marriage, but about the right to adopt children and to grant citizenship to spouses.
Next I wonder, what are the arguments against marriage for polygamists? And if I can marry several people (how many - 100 perhaps?), do I have to prove I love them before they get the right to live in my country?
I believe homosexuality is wrong based on my religion, and by extension, gay marriage, and I don't appreciate the liberal majority on this website brow beating me with their politics when it has nothing to do even tangentially with technology.
That could be linked to cheaper and better smartphones, better and more available video-games, raise of streaming and shitty TV shows or increase of traffic to 4chan.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadOn conservative commentary website Stream.org, statistician William M. Briggs (who, take it for what it's worth, opposes same-sex marriage) offers a critique of the study's methodology and conclusion, as well as the conclusion that the study expressly does not make, but that the headlines have made:
https://stream.org/no-a-study-did-not-show-that-same-sex-mar...
A few interesting snippets from his critique:
> A weighted 8.6% to a weighted 8%, they say. This is a 7% reduction, all right, but a minor tweak in the actual weighted number. The numbers are weighted averages across several states and the result of a statistical model called a linear regression. The 0.6 drop is not observed, but is the output from a model.
> The numbers within states is anything but straightforward (the authors provide graphs). For instance, some states show reported suicide attempts increasing after gmarriage (New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, for example). The graphs also indicate a general decline in rates before gmarriage and continuing afterwards (see their Fig. 3).
> putting Ebola in the model works equally well with gmarriage to explain the data. So do the disasters of those crashing Malaysian airliners, or the fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. So does the 2014 Winter Olympics!
One other point that Briggs makes only indirectly, but bears mentioning, is that measuring the number of self-reported unsuccessful suicide attempts only provides us with part of the picture; we can't make any firm conclusions about what its rise or fall says about suicide prevention unless we also know the number of _successful_ suicide attempts. For instance, it might be the case that some suicide prevention factor reduces the likelihood that any given suicide attempt is successful. Maybe hospitals have gotten better at reducing the mortality rate of intentional overdoses. In such a case, the rate of suicide attempts might remain relatively flat, but the rate of unsuccessful suicide attempts would rise, and the rate of successful suicide attempts would fall.
Statistical noise is always present, so of course suicide among GSM teens did not uniformly drop.
The JAMA study used different years for different states, as same-sex marriage became legal in different states at different times. His criticism about "any event in 2014 explains this drop in suicide" is malformed.
By the way, if you look at the accompanying figure 2 and figure 3 in the JAMA article, you will see just how noisy the data is for both Wave 1 and Wave 2 states, as well as the relative lack of post-2014 data points. Honestly, just looking at those two charts should be enough to give you a healthy skepticism about the conclusion, whatever your ideological views.
Take perspective of the modeller. What would be the first circle of influence in teen suicide? Probably direct social interactions (family, peers). Second circle? More abstract things like succes in school, relationships, the absence of bullying. For a regulatory change to have a meaningfull and measurable effect on suicides (literally the most drastic step available) is hard on first sight.
And then the step to research design. How would one expect to find a determinating factor by a DiD-design with only some regulatory measure as an explanatory factor?
For me, after looking into this study. First explain me the state by state differences in teen suicides over time adequately, before you start explaining the effect of gay marriage on teen suicides.
Along with 'gay marriage', 'gay acceptance' has been on the rise in general. Social interventions, heck, social media and the internet (i.e people can form like minded networks etc..).
Even a small change in policing and social policy could cause this. A bullying program.
There are so many things that could 'cause' a tiny drop in teen suicide.
Perhaps. But we know there's a correlation between being gay and dying by suicide. We know that gay people are more likely to die by suicide than straight people.
Suicide is a complex phenomena and we should avoid simplistic reasoning, but anything that makes life easier for people to be gay is likely to reduce the numbers of death by suicide of gay people.
EDIT: I don't normally comment on downvotes, but this post is getting lots and I'm a it confused about why.
Here's the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm
> Negative attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people put these youth at increased risk for experiences with violence, compared with other students.1 Violence can include behaviors such as bullying, teasing, harassment, physical assault, and suicide-related behaviors.
[...]
> LGBTQ youth are also at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, suicide attempts, and suicide. A nationally representative study of adolescents in grades 7–12 found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide as their heterosexual peers.3 More studies are needed to better understand the risks for suicide among transgender youth. However, one study with 55 transgender youth found that about 25% reported suicide attempts.4
Wikipedia has a reasonable collection of references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBT_youth
So it would seem that the drop was more pronounced among gay people.
The truth of the conclusion seems irrelevant.
Flawed study shows A implies B.
Hey! Study is flawed!
Flaws don't matter, because it got the expected result.
In this particular example the linked blog post is not saying "hey, this study is flawed", but is saying "I hate gay people and I don't want them to think that their sham marriage is in anyway equivalent to my real marriage". It's pretty clear that the linked post is only trying to find flaw with this study because they disagree with it; if you presented something with exactly the same flaws but showing A implies NotB they'd be praising it as good quality science that supports their point.
EDIT: a quote from the linked post:
>> Think about what the authors are implying: that the mere presence of gmarriage — government-defined marriage, as opposed to marriage defined by reality — stops teens from reporting suicide attempts.
>> This is among all teens, mind you, and not just the minority reporting same-sex attraction or other non-biologically oriented sexual desires. The authors claim the effect was greater in the sexual minority.
The author is clearly, unambiguously, a bigot looking to smear a study. He's not engaged in honest science.
Here's another example of his "science" writing, where he calls evolution a "theory in crisis": https://stream.org/darwins-finches-evidence-evolution-think/
And in your second paragraph, you're saying that the critique is not saying, "Hey, this study is flawed," but is saying, "I hate gay people and I don't want them to think that their sham marriage is in anyway equivalent to my real marriage." Briggs makes no secret of the fact that he rejects same-sex marriage, but the vast majority of his post is devoted to flaws in the study, not to his own personal objections to same-sex marraige, and although his ideological views probably are a motivating factor for his scrutiny of the study, that doesn't necessarily invalidate the points he makes.
Has he ever made similar points about studies that support his anti-gay marriage views? or his climate sceptic views? It should be really easy for him to find bad science among climate sceptics - has he ever written about that?
As far as I can tell, Briggs is Catholic, and he does mock Catholic officials -- including the Pope -- occasionally.
For example, I can say that hell is at the center of the Earth, and that's why it's hot.
It is indeed hot, but it is not due to hell at all.
In the context of this article, I don't think anyone is contesting that gay people are more likely to kill themselves, or that gay marriage is not an improvement.
However, the quality of this specific study apparently can be doubted, and the fact that one agree with the conclusion does not mean we should be lenient on the quality of the math behind it
I hate studies that ignore missing data by saying it's not relevant.
I can only conclude that some people have a radically different idea of "freedom" and "smaller government" than I do.
Bringing it back to the original topic a bit, it's sad that people's reactions are so predictable. People in favor of same-sex marriage think this study is great. People who oppose it think it sucks. How boring! Show me someone in favor of same-sex marriage who thinks this study is terrible, or someone against who thinks the study is really good.
Or they are not acting in good faith.
They want the freedom to limit the freedom of others. They see no problem with that at all.
Small government conservative here. It's actually pretty simple:
Small government: the government should stop meddling in marriage altogether. It's a social and often religious institution.
Freedom: We take seriously the founders' belief that government should not infringe on religious liberty.
My comment was neutral about gay marriage. I was trying to tie the relationship between demographics and Nation-States and why hetero-sex is mostly overlook but important ingredient.
May be in the future each of us get to have clone armies and designer babies, I do not know. But to pretend Sexuality and its outcomes have no bearing in Life and Destiny of a Nation to me is laughable.
The only technology you fundamentally need is enough alcohol for the involved parties to have sex against their preference.
"Against their preference" does not mean "against their will." I'm referring to gay people consensually having heterosexual sex in order to procreate.
To be clear, I'm not sure it is an effective subsidy to begin with, but that's a moot point as far as this discussion goes.
If there's some perceived benefit in legal recognition of a romantic union, then there's no reason to exclude same-sex unions.
Basically, there are a few consistent positions:
1. Children are important. Outcome: either incentivize children, or incentivize fertile couples.
2. Romantic unions are important. Outcome: legally recognize all of them, including same-sex couples.
3. Freedom and small government is important. Outcome: stop recognizing marriage and let people handle it privately.
4. Religion is important. Outcome: legally recognize marriage under something like the rules of your religion.
We can argue for and against the merits of these individual possibilities, but what I can't understand is when someone uses an argument for #1 (as the other commenter here is) or #2 (as the site being discussed is) but somehow ends up with the outcome from #4.
Well, that is what the other commenter is arguing that we already do, at least in theory. The laws are from a different time, so there are many modern-day loopholes for sure, but when you look at the conditions at the time when the laws were enacted marriage would be essentially limited to those who could (to the best of their knowledge) and were willing to have children, intended to create an environment to make having children amiable.
Even divorce law is predicated on the idea that the spouse will stay home to take care of the children. Since that leaves one member of the household without an income for many years, in the event of a dissolution of the partnership one member will be left out in the cold, so to speak, so we created rules to share the proceeds gained in the process to ensure that each party is compensated for their efforts.
I think we can find all kinds of arguments as to why that is flawed in 2017, but if we just stick to the assumption that the subsidy provides exactly the expected outcome: Why does it need to change at all?
But, since nobody seems to be incorporating that data in the discussion, I'm not sure we can really fault the other commenter for believing that we are getting the desired results out of the existing subsidies. The results haven't shown up as a clear negative with respect to the intended outcome, so it is natural to assume, without better information, that it is working just fine. And, as you said, if it is working just fine there is no need for change.
Absolutely, more data is needed in this discussion to evaluate the effectiveness of what we have and to compare against alternatives. But to outright dismiss the unmeasured effectiveness of a subsidy because a handful of people have proven the willingness to do the same without that subsidy seems to be the only silly part of this discussion.
This article is US-centric, and the US does not have a problematic low reproductive rate (total fertility rate of 1.9), so I fail to see the relevance.
Funny ol' world, eh?
Gay families can and do raise children. Being unable to naturally produce children doesn't preclude raising children.
My mother-in-law is gay. When she was a young adult, before she came out, she got married and had children because "that's what you did" and she didn't have the courage to go against what was expected of her.
She, however, was incredibly miserable. Her distress with being gay and married to a man was a huge contributor to her drug and alcohol addition at that time. As a result her children didn't have a good family life.
Finally she was distressed enough to divorce my father-in-law and come out.
She's now married to a woman, totally sober, much healthier (she dropped over 100 pounds), and very happy.
Others are campaigning to make polygamy legal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sister-wives-case-utah_u...
Some support pedophilic polygamy: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/warren-jeffs-trying-to-lead-poly...
How on earth is allowing other people to get married infringing on your religious liberty??
The logic of this baffles me.
I disagree with you, but I will not downvote your comment.
Healthcare: The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charitable organization that also offers healthcare for women, were required by the Affordable Care Act to provide contraception as part of their services. This infringed on the religious liberty of practicing Catholics. Nonetheless, the federal government fined the Little Sisters of the Poor for not providing a service the Catholic Church considers immoral. Million of dollars in lawyer fees later, the Supreme Court finally reversed the decision [0].
Marriage: A gay couple asked a Jack Phillips, a Christian baker and owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, to make the wedding cake for their upcoming gay marriage ceremony. The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths all forbid homosexuality; Philips asked the couple to take their business elsewhere. But the couple took Phillips to court and the court ruled that Phillips and his staff were required to break their moral convictions and were ordered take re-education classes and file quarterly compliance reports for two years [1].
[0]: http://thelittlesistersofthepoor.com/#supreme-court-ruling
[1]: http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/26/christian-baker-forced-to-...
You are merely changing the language to avoid admitting the reality of a government infringing on religious liberty.
The government forcing religious people to go against their religion is infringement of religious liberty. Forcing those religious people to undergo government re-education classes is Stalinesque.
The founders of the US saw this potential abuse; it's why religious liberty is protected as the first right in the Bill of Rights.
And on a broader point, this is why we fight for small government: a large, powerful government is a bastion for tyranny. And the religious are merely the canary in the coal mine.
Perhaps the left will recognize this wisdom after President Trump issues executive orders overturning all that the left holds dear.
Everything else in your comment is basically offtopic.
You dismissed it as pertaining to anti-discrimination laws, even though it specifically was caused by same-sex marriage laws and involved a dispute about religious freedoms in response to those laws.
Imagine a world in which any healthcare provider could arbitrarily decline coverage for anything on the grounds of "religion". Have a genetic illness, sorry that's founded on the "theory" of evolution we're not going to cover you, etc. Allowing healthcare providers to pick and choose coverage is a nightmare for consumers .
Your second example is a similar issue. Allowing businesses to arbitrarily deny service to minorities (the case would have been different if the couple asked for a custom cake with a phrase the Phillips found objectionable) is not small gov or freedom of religion. It's just plain bigotry.
A citizen's freedom of religion ends when the next citizen's rights begin. If you take that away you might as well be living in a Theocracy.
What "right" are you talking about here? The gay couple's "right" to force a particular person to bake them a cake? There is no such right.
Likewise, there's no "right" to healthcare. You can't force a doctor to perform a medical procedure on you, for example. Forcing people to provide you with their services is called slavery.
It is someone's "opinion" that a private Catholic Christian charity should exercise a procedure or have a policy that is strictly against the values of that organization.
Strictly speaking, as intelligent adults here, we can rationalize that a Catholic charity does not believe in contraceptives or abortions and would not participate in these activities. They have a long held history of this practice and it wasn't made up on the spot because they felt like it, such as your example of belief in evolution leading to denial of a procedure, which very few if any people in this country hold and especially any organizations that practice in the field of medicine.
Frankly, if you have issue with private healthcare providers having a choice in their practice, you should be for a legal framework and consumer market that allows for more consumer choice instead of less so people can choose a provider that works with what they need. In a truly free market, this would be extremely easy to accomplish.
As to the baker example, it doesn't require any further explanation than this. No private individual or business has a solemn duty to respect and faithfully accommodate the practices and requests of another individual that they object too. Would a satanist be a protected individual with case to sue if they specifically wished for a Christian bakery to create a cake with Jesus impaled on a cross? Afterall, the satanist is a minority holding a minority belief.
As citizens in a free society, if we want to start rolling back division in this country, we need to dramatically improve our education, and we need to start allowing people to behave freely again, good and bad. Forcing people into associations they don't want to have causes further division ultimately.
That case might be an argument against laws which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexuality, but it's not an argument against same-sex marriage.
"Religious liberty," especially in the context of the American founders, is the freedom to practice your faith privately in whatever manner you wish, and to speak about that faith publicly without fear or persecution. It is not the freedom to impose your religious mores on other people who do not share your religion, or even those who do. To imply otherwise is to bastardize what this country was founded on and does a disservice to the founders.
If you want government to stop meddling in marriage, I hope you're fighting against tax breaks and other marriage incentives just as hard as you are against allowing two people you'll never meet to enjoy the same recognition straight people do.
That's a common viewpoint today, but there's nothing in the 1A about _private_ exercise of religion. The public exercise of religion is very much what is protected though there are limits when it affects others or infringes on other laws (e.g., bigamy, etc.)
Tax breaks and other marriage incentives have a legitimate function in domestic policy (e.g., it's very much in the state's interest to encourage two-parent families for raising the next generation of productive citizens). While those reasons are not always entirely uncontroversial, it's unfortunate that they are sometimes swept up into the debate around "getting government out of the marriage business."
Civil (ie. government sanctioned) marriage is a social construct that most people want to, and eventually will, enter into. People enter into marriages because they want the legal framework around it. If there were no legal framework around marriage people would have to run around filling out paperwork everywhere setting up their partner as their next-of-kin.
There's also currently no non-marriage way to create the same sort of civil partnership that marriage brings, stuff like spousal privilege and unlimited inheritance just to name two. And these are things people want. If all people were interested in was religious marriage or partnership/love/companionship they either wouldn't bother getting married or wouldn't bother registering their religious marriage with the state.
Its currently impossible to get government out of marriage without also fundamentally changing our concept of marriage.
There's arguments that the "family/marriage" concept is benefited too much in society, and I'd probably agree with that.
You may be mistaking American secularism with laicism.
> It is not the freedom to impose your religious mores on other people who do not share your religion, or even those who do.
I agree. This is why the Christian concept of marriage should not be imposed on others, like Muslims and Mormons who are perfectly happy with polygamy.
For example, we support the Bill of Rights' 1st amendment which states the government shall make no infringement on the free exercise of religion. That's a regulation that protects liberty, so we support it.
And we are generally pro-life for the same reason: the Declaration of Independence states that every person has the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Since abortion snuffs out all three, we seek regulation that restricts it.
The end goal is the same: smaller government, less powerful, with less impact on individual liberty.
So basically, bigger government. A smaller government would recuse itself and let the surrounding society punish infringement on protected liberties, which it already does quite well (example: do you, a San Francisco landlord, trust a racist renter over a non-racist one? And you know, because you looked them up on Facebook.)
Aren't you the least bit concerned with the other sectors of your society, that don't necessarily come to the same conclusions as you, taking notice and doing the same thing to yours? What happens when the definition of "every person" isn't universal ("group of cells" defined in an arbitrary way for the Left, from conception for the Right), or when different groups are split between which one is more important (parent for the Left, unborn child conceived the "right" way for the Right)?
Let's take another 1A example- freedom of speech. Both the Left and the Right have legitimate claims that exercise of certain kinds of speech damages the fabric of society. Their names and emphasis on certain parts are different, but the incidentals are otherwise identical (societies, like religions, are destabilized by blasphemy). But if we cave in and allow one subgroup's restriction, the other logically follows and every subgroup suffers- hard power is even more inflexible than an opposing subgroup's view of you/r group.
So subsocities agree to disarmament; one group gives up the authority to ban stuff culturally justifiable in areas held by a different group, and vice versa. This is the other purpose of the Bill of Rights- all groups, including yours, need protection from the society around them. The fact that there's an amendment ensuring that groups can defend themselves with force if things really go wrong should speak volumes about how important and valuable that treaty is.
I agree, the government should get out of marriage, but that also necessarily implies that it gets no special legal recognition, and would mean that gay people could also get married.
Governments may wish to encourage male-female marriage (moms & dads => children and healthy environment => productive families => civilization). If that means less taxation for families, and thus a smaller and less powerful government, all the better.
Would that be bad?
Seems religiously motivated to me, as you'd expect. Nothing extraordinary.
Of course they also invent other reasons, and bend the facts to fit their views. But everybody does that, it's just human nature.
Please understand, I'm not attempting to make a general argument about every single person opposed to same-sex marriage. I'm specifically discussing the attitudes of stream.org, and by extension other people who hold a similar "freedom, small government, and no same-sex marriage" attitude.
[0] https://stream.org/ten-principles/
"Free societies protect private property. They allow their citizens to participate in the political process, to make basic economic choices, to exercise virtue and charity and to freely exercise their religious faith."
"Evil is not just in our imaginations. We can’t eradicate it with the right amount of social engineering or positive thinking."
"The state does not determine what marriage and family are, but it must recognize them. We should oppose political attempts to redefine marriage, which are wars against the creation itself."
If they think official recognition of only "traditional" marriage is more important than the other stuff, then fine, but they should stop pretending that they're all about freedom.
Liberty in this sense as used by the site you mention, includes certain responsibilities, while the libertine is unrestrained or free of responsibility.
Smaller government would be a government that does less stuff, grants status to fewer people, etc. Marriage is a legal construct that allows a couple to receive special status from the state. Same-sex marriage advocates are in favor of the government extending the benefits of that special status to an additional class of relationships. It's consistent with small government platforms to be suspicious of such expansions, regardless of one's feelings about the independent merits of the arrangement.
Hypothetically, one could be the largest advocate of permanent same-sex coupling while simultaneously believing that the government doesn't need to expand the definition of marriage to include them under its umbrella.
Not trying to drag this out, but no one has really said this yet. Opposing the expansion of marriage is consistent because expanding government is always met with suspicion by small government advocates.
No, consistency wouldn't demand that. Small government people are not automatically "no government" people. I'm saying it's natural for them to be skeptical of the expansion of services to cover new arrangements. That's government growth; small government people are likely to take a default dubious position for almost all forms of government growth/expansion, but that doesn't mean they have to oppose every function the government currently performs. That'd make them anarchists, not conservatives.
So when someone says "I want to expand a government-granted status to a new thing", the natural small government reaction is "You better have a very compelling case, because we hate the words 'expand a government-granted status'".
Going beyond this, we get into an argument on the details of same-sex marriage, and this is neither the time nor the place for that, but the point is that it is conventional for a small government proponent to view proposals to expand a longstanding legal tradition with suspicion, without necessarily requiring them to be hostile to that legal tradition as it stands. Pretending like this doesn't make sense is creating a false dichotomy. The choice doesn't have to be between "same-sex marriage" or "no marriage" to be internally consistent.
Your argument is basically that people tend to be more skeptical of change than of the status quo. Which is absolutely true, but it's not reason, it's just inertia.
"Small government" people are as prone to this mental shortcut as anyone, but that doesn't make it consistent or reasonable, it just makes it human.
We can't get into the details without this turning into a debate on same-sex marriage in general, but my point is that small government people are extra skeptical of changes that expand the government. More skeptical than the average person, because beyond simple inertia, there is an ideology that says the government should be limited and that growth should be opposed unless a compelling interest can be shown. That ideology must be satisfied to get small government people on board.
Any statistical study can be criticized as 'only being likely, not being certain.' Briggs does not provide contrary epidemiological evidence. His critique is based on the possibility of alternative explanation inherent in all statistical studies. At best there's a failure to understand the epistemological character of empirical knowledge.
Well, popular (or increasingly mainstream) results get more grants, peer acceptance and media coverage, so there's always that.
Up to the eighties those same journals would have no qualms "proving" that homosexuality is harmful, and in fact there were tons of studies to that effect.
(It works the same, but with an inverse sign, for those scientists going for the conservative audience and its, increasingly fewer, and more marginalised, grants).
So it could be more that the tide has turned, and a push to get a cute result to publish and get some publicity and good will, than an actual causation.
Better assign the same, high, probability in all fields where there are humans involved.
I assign a similarly low probability to the idea that the refuting author's self interest or fallibility caused him to publish an opinion that is at odds with the current mission of the organization that published it as I do to the probability that the original author is at odds with the purposes of the institution that published his research.
So while the data is real, for whatever reason this study focused on seeking out a specific political conclusion from it that is tenuously linked at best. I would like to see who funded this research.
We don't know, but probably "some". We can say that a state that forbids gay marriage might have schools that are less inclusive of LGBT teens, and that a state that allows gay marriage might have schools that are more inclusive of LGBT teens; and we sort of know that inclusive schools are important to reduce thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts, and deaths by suicide. (Although more research is needed.)
The CDC has some nice info, all sourced: https://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm
You mentioned funding. That's described in the paper:
> Funding/Support: Ms Raifman is supported by training grants T32AI102623 and R25MH083620 from the National Institutes of Health. Dr Austin is supported by training grants T71-MC-00009 and T76-MC-00001 from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services.
> Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funding sources played no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Is that the conclusion the study comes to? Or is that an assumption you've made based on the headline here and not having read the study?
Pretty much none, I would expect. However, legalising same-sex marriage indicates a degree of acceptance by gay people.
I'm gay, and was born in 1985, in Ireland, which only formally legalised homosexuality in 1991. Employment discrimination against gay people only became illegal when I was 15 or so (thanks, EU), and we voted to legalise same-sex marriage when I was 29. As a kid, I felt that society was pretty bloody hostile to people like me, and I certainly did feel better when the employment discrimination law came in; I felt less like a second class citizen. Even though in practice it was rather rare for people to offend against this law, it signals certain societal attitudes.
The marriage referendum came late enough that it didn't really affect my self-image, but it's certainly plausible that it did for younger people.
This is why I always default to doubting "new study finds ..." until I can see the actual study.
Researchers get to choose the headlines about as much as programers get to choose the software features.
http://andrewgelman.com/2017/02/22/cloak-and-dagger/
For a lot of lgbtq teens who are having a rough time because the sliver of the world that they live in is against them at every turn, the hope that the wider world is more accepting and that they'll have equal rights and protections, that they'll just be able to live, has to provide hope to some. Same-sex marriage is just another rung in the ladder of progress and every step up that ladder is going to be the tipping point for someone to decide to live instead of checking out.
If the study had only considered only teens who came out, that could have ignored those who are depressed of being gay but not yet come out.
1: https://newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-ho...
This "comparison methodology" that the researchers presume to get around that - does not get around the problem of small sample sizes nor does it eliminate other variables such as social attitudes because the legalization of gay marriage itself is linked to changing social attitudes towards homosexuality.
I am glad that gay suicides are down, but to say it's definitely linked to gay marriage is premature and unfounded. This research seems to be pseudo science in the service of a political agenda.
I don't require a license to exercise my right to free speech and publish something online or create a film. I don't have to apply for a license to practice religion. Why the hell do I need permission from the government to get married, especially when such a ceremony (for most people) is a religious one? Sure, some people go to the justice of the peace to get married. But nearly everyone has a religious ceremony or they hire a neutral officiant (or have someone they know get ordained).
Historically marriage has always been a religious ceremony. If we want to deem it something else, I'm fine with that. We can still allow people to get married and not have the government be involved. Why can't we just decide who we are going to get married to, and simply fill out some paperwork to declare (not ask permission) ourselves married and notify the government of our status change.
Asking permission is obscene and defeats the entire purpose of declaring it a "fundamental right".
Of course the commitment of those involved is the most important part of a marriage, but given the way our society works, the legal rights are also quite important.
But a lot of the other stuff having to do with tax benefits...I'm not too crazy about. The government is notorious for doling out tax benefits to activities they want to promote. Like the mortgage interest deduction. The government wants to promote home ownership so they created that to incentivize people buy homes. That's arguably the most popular tax break out there, but all it does is give preference to how you spend your money. Spend it on something the government approves of, and you get a tax break. Similar story with child tax credits, dependent care credits, etc. They are basically rubber stamping certain life choices. And the effect is that people who neglect or outright refuse to engage in these choices/expenditures end up paying more in taxes, all else being equal.
It's a much more culturally secular entity, and can defined better. For example, two people who live together long enough can be declared in a civil union, this way, someone can get spousal benefits even if they don't go through the process of getting married, which is more fair, I think.
'Marriage' is something cultural and religious. People can call themselves married, or not, it's not legally relevant.
You go to City Hall to register your partnership.
You go to Church (or whatever) to get married.
In the United States, they are legally different concepts, with marriage conferring more rights to the couple. Since Obergefell v. Hodges, civil unions are not really used.
In most countries which implemented them, that's broadly correct, yeah. In some countries there were also constitutional issues; in Ireland we had to change our constitution to permit same-sex marriage, for instance, so we had civil unions in the mean time.
In practice, though, there were lots of small unintended legal differences. Marriage has been around since before any modern society, and it weaves itself into laws and regulations. The campaign for equal marriage in Ireland found something like a thousand legal differences between civil unions and marriages, mostly essentially accidental. They're a mess and should be avoided if possible.
Civil unions were largely implemented as an alternative to marriage, usually only for same-sex couples, either because granting same-sex marriage was too contentious, unconstitutional, or similar reasons. And they worked like marriage; they were generally contracted just like a civil marriage. Generally, when countries permit same-sex marriage, they also remove any existing civil union laws. We had them in Ireland for a few years until the constitution was changed to allow same-sex marriage, for instance; after that the law was changed to forbid any new civil unions.
Civil marriage already is a civil union; distinct-in-name "civil unions" are a separate (if sometimes nominally equal) civic institution to keep same-sex unions segregated-in-name from opposite-sex unions.
> For example, two people who live together long enough can be declared in a civil union, this way, someone can get spousal benefits even if they don't go through the process of getting married
"The process of getting married" basically exists to (1) document the state of union to aid in dispute resolution, (2) provide notice of an opportunity for basic review for legal barriers to the union (which now are basically consanguinity and already being in a similar union with someone else), and (3) provide clear documentation of consent from both parties to.the formation of the union.
The less formal form you describe (common-law marriage) coexisted alongside formal "registered" marriage (and, arguably, is even more linked to religion than the formal kind, since it's a direct product of the Christian doctrine that sacramental marriage is created between the partners alone, with the Church and/or State functioning as additional witnesses, not the creators of the state), but has increasingly fallen out of favor because it creates a lack of clarity about legal rights and obligations.
It also would represent a much larger change than extending existing marriage benefits.
What you're asking for isn't permission to get married. You're asking for government recognition of your marriage.
Historically marriage has always been a religious ceremony.
No. Historically, weddings have been religious ceremony.
Marriage is bigger than the wedding. Marriage means legal changes. Being married means that someone can hold you accountable for your spouse's debts. Being married means the joint ownership of property. Being married means next of kin status. Being married means legal presumption of paternity. Being married means survivor's benefits when one spouse dies.
These are all things what are enforced by the government and THAT is why marriage licenses exist.
Want to declare your undying love for your partner and become religiously, spiritually or culturally married? Go ahead. Want the legal protections of the secular institution of marriage? You need a license.
But wanting government recognition so that the legal benefits can be had does not inherently require a license. It can and should be done through mere declaration and formal notification to the government. Our laws could absolutely be changed such that any two people (or more, I suppose, but for simplicity we'll leave it at two) could fill out paperwork and declare themselves married. As long as neither of those people have any existing/active declaration of marriage to someone else, then it would be valid and in force until otherwise revoked. This is very similar to what we have now except there is no permission needed. You are basically electing to put yourself into a specific set of rules, just like a contract, that both parties in the marriage agree to. That set of rules is known and defined and the declaration acts as an acceptance/agreement to enter it. And like a contract, it can't just be exited without the other party's explicit agreement to end it - otherwise adjudication would be required, like any contract dispute.
"No. Historically, weddings have been religious ceremony." This seems like a odd point to make. Weddings and marriage go hand in hand. No one has a wedding without being married. But I think what you are trying to get at is the legal aspect. All of that would still exist and does not inherently require a license, as I talked about above.
"Want the legal protections of the secular institution of marriage? You need a license." My entire point is that the government has made it that way, but it doesn't have to be that way. The current licensing requirements restrict human freedom for no apparent reason other than for the government to reject lifestyles and values that are not approved.
You don't need permission to buy a house. You just buy it, usually with a loan from a bank. Then you file paperwork with the government telling them that it was sold to you, what date you bought it, etc. Then you become the legal homeowner and it is recorded in the public record. You then receive all the legal benefits (and responsibilities) of being the homeowner. This is essentially identical to what I am saying for marriage. Why does marriage have to be any different?
There being an ability revoke means you still need government permission. The only difference is that we would assume a default answer of "Yes" when one asks.
This seems like a odd point to make. Weddings and marriage go hand in hand.
Perhaps I was being a bit pedantic but I also wanted to emphasize that there is a very big civil/secular aspect to marriage.
That's pretty much what modern civil marriage already _is_, though. The marriage can't be refused unless it's illegal for some reason (one or more participants under age or already married or something). You're essentially giving a notification; the state will reject it if there's something wrong with it; if it's kosher they'll give you an acknowledgement that they accept the notification. The "license" terminology (which isn't used everywhere) is perhaps not appropriate.
> You don't need permission to buy a house. You just buy it, usually with a loan from a bank.
Funnily enough, when I bought my house I had to sign an elaborate declaration that I was not married (or civil union'd). This is because, in Ireland, the spouse automatically has rights to the family home, and it's illegal to clandestinely buy a house on your own in an attempt to avoid this. If I hadn't signed that, my purchase of the house wouldn't have been legal, but, like a civil marriage, it's basically just a declaration that all is in order.
Why do we tie those to sexual relationship status, though? The only one of those for which that makes any sense is a legal presumption of paternity, which we don't need now that we have accurate genetic tests (save for identical twins).
Why shouldn't my brother, or my best friend, or members of my yacht club, be able to hold joint ownership, or be my next of kin, or get benefits through me?
Secular marriage is just the husk of religious marriage, sapped of what actually makes a marriage marriage.
In the mean time, I'd hope you'll also champion the uniform application of fundamental rights - that our government, even if it does something you feel is wrong, doesn't also apply that something unevenly to intentionally deprive specific groups of those freedoms.
I did — I supported civil unions when they were on the ballot in my state.
It's not like you're required to get married. It's just a thing that's available if people want it. I'd certainly be in favour of more devolved rights traditionally associated with marriage being available (right to nominate next of kin etc).
I understand that this kind of thinking has fallen out of favor but the answer to your question is this, because the primary purpose of marriage is for having and raising children.
Of course, people who will never have children can and do get married. Of course, people who are too old to have children can get married. And now, people for whom it's biologically impossible to reproduce can get married.
Maybe it's time for a whole series of discussions about our society's future plans for marriage.
Marriage should be an n-party agreement with minor legal overhead, like an LLC.
The social purpose of the legal presumption of paternity (especially that that is clearly sought where that presumption is conclusive rather than rebuttable) is not affected by genetic testing.
> Secular marriage is just the husk of religious marriage, sapped of what actually makes a marriage marriage.
The original and overwhelmingly consistent part of marriage (which has always been a civic institution, whatever religious connotations it might also share in particular times and places) is unifying property rights; it is at its core an economic relationship. (Various religious models provide a variety of explanations for why one might seek such an economic relationship.)
Bingo. Ownership of women, ownership of children, and subsequent inheritance of possessions (the illegitimate historically don't inherit) when the owner dies. Doesn't sound very nice to us, but it's what there was. Still, progress is what it's all about; maybe we can be better people than our ancestors.
The elephant in the room that must be established here is a biological one. As much as we can hold hands and sing about the beauty of love, it remains that biologically, only a man and a woman can have children.
Historically, it is this dependency, this social contract to promise to stay together to raise one's children, that has given rise to many of the legal protections that a marriage license provides.
Now, there have been lots of heterosexual couples who marry on paper, never have kids, and for them it's largely a financial commitment (legally) and less of a social contract. I don't think same sex marriage is different in a financial regard than these examples, so I support it. But the situation gets somewhat more hairy when you consider that same sex couples may still want to raise children, and then the issue of surrogate mothers, adoption, same sex households, and all sorts of other potential legal complications come into play. How would a custody case play out with two fathers, for example?
I'm not arguing for or against same sex marriage, and I'm personally in a polyamorous relationship that's unlikely to be recognized legally in any way shape or form, so there's that as well. I just want to draw attention to some of the hidden complexities that it introduces.
These already exist. Gay couples have kids, even married ones.
Not really. Most of the legal effects of marriage amount to legal privileges of the parties to the marriage with respect to each other, both with property and in some power-of-attorney like ways.
The big exception is the presumption (rebuttable or absolute, depending on the jurisdiction) of paternity, which may be irrelevant to same sex [0] marriages (though, in principle, even ignoring the issues under the previous footnote the absolute form and it's stability-over-biology related motivations is equally applicable to same-sex female unions as it is to opposite-sex unions.)
[0] Though given that legal sex is really a form of socially-ascribed gender and may not align with biological sex, it's also arguable that presumption of paternity is just as applicable to same (legal) sex unions as opposite sex unions as a class, though statistically less likely to be relevant to any particular same sex union, given the loose correlation between biological and legal sex.
In many parts of the world, polygamy is legal. The president of South Africa has many wives. We dare not question their 'cultural integrity'.
A libertarian argument for polygamy could be made easily, just as strongly as the one for gay marriage.
Personally, I believe marriage is a cultural institution, not a civic one. I think that the government should not be in the business of defining what marriage is - and stick to 'civil unions'. Two people can declare themselves to be married - it's their choice of identity. Others can chose to reject that if they want. The government gets involved only for legal issues, much like you're declared to be in a 'civil union' if you live together with someone for long enough, irrespective of your marriage status.
But who gets to decide whether a civil union couple can file tax jointly or not?
Each reporting adult filer in the household would link to a household TIN (like a EIN) and it would be done in aggregate. The decision to file separately would be based on the dilution of deductions as number of filers increased, relative financial independence desired, or risk of incurring the tax liabilities of others in the household.
(That would discourage roommates from filing jointly if they desired financial independence to avoid abusing the model)
For most of history it's been both a religious and a civic institution (marriage is an institution, a wedding is a ceremony commemorating, or effecting depending on the model, the entrance into that institution), both in nature and effect, with the civilian/legal effect regarding property rights and inheritance arguably most often the predominant aspect; the idea that the religious and the civic domains are fundamentally separate rather than deeply linked is a relatively modern innovation, along with which came completely separate religious and civic institutions of marriage in the places where that separation between the religious and the civic domains has been given effect.
You have to ask this question in the context of legal history. In English common law, from which United States law on marriage is derived, marriage was basically a legal contract stripping women of most of their rights and transferring them to the husband: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture
Common misconception, but not really true. For most of history, marriage for normal people was rarely a ceremony _at all_. The state and church usually recognised marriage to greater or lesser degrees, but most people were deemed married because they were recognised by their community as being married. Formal religious or civic marriage ceremonies were mostly for the upper classes. Gradually they spread out among classes (especially in Catholic countries), but in many places common-law marriage remained acceptable until surprisingly recently.
In England, for instance, common-law marriage wasn't abolished until 1753. It wasn't abolished in Scotland until 2006. In America, a number of states _still_ recognise common-law marriage.
And even where marriage registration has long been required for recognition, this has often been purely civil. People in some European countries, if they want a church marriage, have to get 'married' twice; the civil authorities don't recognise the church one, and this has been the case for a long time (I think since the French Revolution for France).
> Why can't we just decide who we are going to get married to, and simply fill out some paperwork to declare (not ask permission) ourselves married and notify the government of our status change.
If you live in a common-law marriage state, you can. You don't even have to file any paperwork (though it'll cause you trouble traveling if you don't get it formally recognised).
> Asking permission is obscene and defeats the entire purpose of declaring it a "fundamental right".
When you get legally married, you're not really asking permission. You're informing the state of the fact. For practical reasons, most modern countries won't recognise your marriage unless you do this (though, as above, some US states will). But you're not really asking permission as such.
Next I wonder, what are the arguments against marriage for polygamists? And if I can marry several people (how many - 100 perhaps?), do I have to prove I love them before they get the right to live in my country?