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Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

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Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

Josh Jasper — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:07:38 -0000

Consider: Andrew Sullivan is a famous openly-gay commenter, who runs a generally pretty interesting blog, on which he has spoken at great length about the tremendous psychic toll that [Homosexuality] bigotry has taken on his life

Fixed that or you.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

PeteL — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:51:17 -0000

One other thing - if you accept my premise that your peculiar sexual profile, different from every other human's peculiar sexual profile, is not contained in your genetic code (which otherwise, incongruously, no other human would ever have had given your sexual uniqueness), then there are significant implications that cut in several directions.

I will grant, as I did several posts ago, that the actual mechanism of imprinting is much too uncertain to restrict another's civil rights by preventing gays from marrying. Even if one could draw a straight line from the normalization of gay marriage to imprinting sexual profiles, I still favor legalization. But this doesn't mean that imprinting is a non-concern, or that those who worry about it are definitionally haters.

Consider: Andrew Sullivan is a famous openly-gay commenter, who runs a generally pretty interesting blog, on which he has spoken at great length about the tremendous psychic toll that homosexuality has taken on his life. Today he posted a letter from an unidentified, anonymous individual claiming that we shouldn't worry about childrens' exposure to homosexual matters since "Kids will always do what they do when it comes time to experiment".

So if we know that imprinting determines sexual identity, even if we don't understand the mechanism, and Sullivan informs us that homosexuality has been an avenue to suffering in his life, and I as a parent wish to spare my own child suffering, I should nevertheless set aside my concerns because some random, unidentified, anonymous person that Sullivan cherry-picks asserts there's nothing to be concerned about?

Y'all are probably going to have to put me over with the haters I guess. They're not a particularly appealing crowd, but I don't have much confidence in the other group...

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

PeteL — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:33:44 -0000

Here's my story, as one of countless illustrations for why sexual identity is doubtlessly not genetically encoded: I am a guy that's empirically a heterosexual, with a sexual "resume" that is probably a bit thinner than average, but only involving women. Happily married, couple of awesome kids, and there's a 99.9%+ chance that I will die having never experienced anything more intimate with another male than an awkward hug.

However, when I was in high school years ago, I had a brief, bizarre and untoward crush on another guy - not a particularly attractive guy mind you - but the type of crush that was certainly different from the proverbial man crush. I never spoke to the person in high school; I never spoke about the person in high school; I'm certain he would not remember who I was.

But to our discussion: do I have the gene for "exclusively-heterosexual-but-for-the-brief-incongruous-obsession-with-that-one-relatively-unattractive-guy-in-high-school?" If I did, how would that gene propagate in the population (to say nothing of how any gene coding for gay intent would propagate in a population)? Further, if I have that gene, then some number of my close relatives must also have that gene, which could create an interesting experience at Thanksgiving if I try to root out which of my relatives had a brief, unacted-upon, same sex interest in an unattractive male that shared material characteristics with my own version. Full disclosure: not sure how you would bring up such a topic. But I digress.

Look, of course my exclusive-heterosexuality-with-oneoff-random-interest-in-odd-high-school guy is not contained in my genetic code. Nor is yours or anyone else's. Genes just don't work that way. I was born with a particular inclination toward sexuality, which ended up mapping through circumstance on heterosexuality, but within life's rich pageant, having a curious side effect leading to a difficult-to-explain high school intrigue. Everyone's story plays out roughly the same (though the particulars are obviously different).

In fact, all sorts of behaviors are encoded by experience. Many are easy to isolate (unlike sexuality), and at this point, many are beyond dispute. A classic example is language development. My young child and I listen to Japanese CDs when driving in the car. My child can hear all phonemes in the Japanese language; I physically can not. If we drove around long enough, my child could learn to speak Japanese without an accent; I physically never could, because I can never incorporate the Japanese-only phonemes my brain cannot process.

I was born with the undifferentiated capacity to hear all potential phonemes, then my brain coded the phonemes associated with the English language. My inability to hear those Japanese-only phonemes is not a "lifestyle choice" or a "preference", I can no more hear those Japanese phonemes than I can sprout wings and fly to the moon.

If we are comfortable with imprinting in the context of language development - among many other developmental domains - what is so offensive about imprinting in the context of development of one's sexual identity?

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

AJH — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:02:52 -0000

Petel, "(If the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...)"

In your case, your double-headed hammer is these twin notions of "preference" and "imprinting" with regard to human sexuality. You dismiss any genetic link to sexuality as "silly," though you don't say why you think this is silly. Is it silly because you just plain don't agree with it, because it doesn't fit with your view of humanity, because you don't want to travel that particular slippery slope? There has been plenty of scientific work performed and published that indicates that, like handed-ness, sexuality is genetically determined, which makes a hell of a lot more sense than "imprinting" or "preference." The vast majority of queer people in the world are "imprinted" by heterosexuals, we move through a world that assumes heterosexuality, that is saturated with heterosexual propaganda. If "imprinting" were at play, there simply wouldn't be any queer people like me, because I am not exaggerating when I say that I didn't meet any queer people until I was well into my college years, but I had homosexual feelings beginning at age 6.

So try, if you will, to view it as an immutable characteristic, like handedness. In handedness, there is a spectrum of traits, as it is with sexuality. The vast majority of the people are right-handed (just as the vast majority of people are heterosexual.) There's a small percentage of people who are ambidextrous (just as there is a small percentage of people who are bisexual.) There's a small percentage of people who are left-handed (just as there is a small percentage of people who are homosexual.) People are spread across the spectrum of handedness, between the extremes of strongly right-handed and strongly left-handed, with the vast majority of people being on the right-handed end of the spectrum. Same with sexuality, with the vast majority on the heterosexual end of the spectrum.

You say the burden of proof isn't on you, but you are the one dismissing genetics out of hand, and persisting on using the clinically outmoded term "preference" to refer to sexuality. And you are the one saying that your fear of your children either being imprinted on gay people or becoming gay themselves does not make you homophobic, which is literally the fear of or prejudice against homosexuals. If your fear isn't of the homophobic variety, what is it?

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

bearing — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:49:45 -0000

That's a great example of a basic "fairness" problem that needs to be solved -- next-of-kin type arrangements. There's no rational reason why someone shouldn't be able to designate any next of kin person they want. And there are a whole slew of other privileges that, *if* they are available to people who can currently access them by being married, ought also to be available to other pairs of people through a similarly easy-to-obtain legal status, there being no rational reason to deny them fair access. I might not agree with you on the exact set of such privileges, but it's obvious that it's a nonzero set.

I can't support legal recognition of SSM because of what I believe about marriage, not because of what I believe about the human beings who understandably desire it. But that is not the end of the story, and it seems clear the status quo is going to change. I would like to see Catholic intellectuals, canon lawyers and theologians move on to discussing what fair legal structures we *can* support in good faith and without compromising our beliefs about marriage, rather than only insisting upon what we *can't* support.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

msb — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:44:46 -0000

"I'll check in tomorrow" is a little more than an "off chance", but here I am.

What I heard you do is fear that your children might learn to be gay/lesbian; I can't describe imprinting in any other terms. And I hear you applying the open anger of many commenters above to TNC's post, in which I found his usual precision and generosity. I agree with him and many other commenters: prejudice is part of being human and we must continually combat it in ourselves and society.

I'll finish with a comparison. When I look at history, I see lots of people opposing freedom for others (women, people of different colours, etc.). They may have thought they were acting for truly good and objective reasons, but they were choosing to preserve their own privilege on the backs of other people and using remarkable similar arguments in each case. This is wrong, and bigotry is not too strong a name for it. (I can think of worse.) After this realization, I had to wonder how much these were objective reasons and how much excuses for the defense of privilege.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

PeteL — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:58:23 -0000

msb, on the off chance you read this: my whole point is that the chicks' behavior is contingent on certain critical experiences early in life. If a behavior as essential to survival as following momma is not hard-wired in a simple organism like a chick, what gives you any certainty that a second-order behavior like your sexual preference is hard-wired in your much more nuanced brain?

To AJH's question, of course I don't know when my heterosexuality was imprinted, nor does anyone else, nor even do I know for certain that imprinting explains the origin of sexual preference. Imprinting does a far better explanatory job than the utterly silly "gene for homosexuality" that is the primary alternative, but there is simply no ethical or practical way to design an experiment to prove either explanation correct.

But proof is not my burden here. I am reacting to TNC's final paragraph, which suggested that my apparent fear of imprinting stimuli for my children is merely a defense mechanism to hide my hatred of gays, apparently I am suffering from the "ism" du jour and my feelings are not based on any reasonable motive to protect my child.

As an aside, for me this is a real negative of this blog, and why I can only take it in limited doses. I love TNC's honesty, and I love the openness of this community, but frankly, if I were him, I would use my bully pulpit to throw out accusations of racism, bigotry or prejudice far less frequently than he does. This is not to say that such issues don't exist or are not widespread.

Rather, it is to say that the danger of overreaching is real. And you can see from this very thread, that once you start accusing the masses of bigotry or prejudice or whatever, the thread becomes like the Lord of the Flies, with the people lining up to throw stones at whomever is deemed to be the bigot or racist Simon of the day (ironic, isn't it?)

This becomes especially painful to witness when it turns out that the bigot of the day is, in fact, not quite a bigot but instead motivated by some previously-unforeseen but nevertheless reasonable intent.

For what its worth.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

black yank — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:59:33 -0000

Dan W, that's just it. In their minds, they're not creating second-class citizens. The citizens they target are second-class to begin with, so their treatment of them is justified, to their way of thinking. It's just that sick.

This really is about personhood and refusal to acknowledge "the other" as human. Put whatever label on it you want, it's still wrong.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

black yank — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:57:58 -0000

ninja zombie,

I have answered your question twice now. what is it that I'm not saying that you want me to say?

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

LonBecker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:47:57 -0000

Ninja zombie you really think that not getting ones preference is similar to not being allowed to marry the person of ones choice? I don't know how to answer that because it seems so silly I can't get into the head of someone who believes that.

Thrill seekers are being discriminated against because one of the thrills they might seek to obtain is made illegal for public policy reasons. And you think this is parallel to same sex couples being excluded from the institution of marriage.

You really believe this? You are not just saying it for the sake of argument? You think there is an actual similarity there?

Again, I suppose I could imagine a world in which there was some similarities here. I can't imagine believing the actual world to be such a world.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

The Ninja Zombie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:39:33 -0000

Lon, any law which subsidizes one activity over another discriminates against those who prefer the unsubsidized activity. I'll take a current example:

Obamacare (if it passes) will discriminate against those who prefer minimal/no health insurance in favor of those who prefer mid-level health insurance. (There is even considerable evidence that risk preferences, like sexual preference, are more or less determined biologically.)

Should we apply to Obamacare the same level of scrutiny you seem to wish to apply to gay marriage? I.e., require the government to prove it's a good thing otherwise the law is invalid?

Incidentally, I'm not defending my stated rational basis as a justification for discrimination against gays. I'm simply saying it is a rational basis. The rational basis test simply asks whether a policy is rationally related to a legitimate government objective, not about the certainty of the relation.

For example, if I sue the government arguing that there is no rational basis for a CO2 tax, the court will say "the legislature believes CO2 causes global warming, so the CO2 tax promotes the general welfare." The court will not actually try to verify whether CO2 really does cause global warming.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

msbadger — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:09:20 -0000

Mr. Coates (or TNC) the clarity you bring to your articles is always amazing. I love what you have to say. And I also love what so many of the bloggers on here say! Right on, friends! I couldn't read all the comments and would love to have responded to so many that I did read(wow, what a long thread!)but basically I think of it as the idea that in America, as long as ANY of us have fewer rights than any others we are not free. We still have to fight. Bigotry is a powerful force, and is entrenched in the conservative mindset. To all my gay brothers and sisters, I wish you peace, and the strength to keep carrying on. Keep up the great work, TNC!

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

Darkrose — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:36:11 -0000

Bearing, here's the problem:

Whether or not you're a bigot is irrelevant to me.

If you vote against marriage equality, then in practical terms, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Fred Phelps or whether your best friend/co-worker/son/daughter/second cousin twice removed is gay. I don’t care if you’re a Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Orthodox Jew, or Muslim. Because from where I sit, the result is the same: you believe that my relationship with the person I’ve been with for five years, the person I moved 3,000 miles to be with, the one who goes out at 3 AM to get ginger ale and crackers for me because I have stomach flu, the one who’s held my hand and been there while I’ve dealt with my mother’s dementia and Parkinson’s disease—you’re telling me that because that person is the same gender as I am, our relationship is less valid and less worthy of respect than that of a man and woman who met in Las Vegas, got drunk and decided to get married in front of an Elvis impersonator.

I don't care whether you did so because you believe that God ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, or because you think the state shouldn't be involved with marriage, or because you're worried about what to tell your children, or because you think two men having sex is icky and gross. What matters to me is that you've taken a conscious, deliberate action to say that I, personally, do not deserve the same shot at being happy with the person I love that any straight person does. Your reasons for choosing to make my life more difficult and more painful are much less important to me than the fact that you've made that choice.

If you're standing on my neck, I'll worry about why you'd do something like that later. My first priority will be getting you to stop standing on my neck.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

LonBecker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:57:06 -0000

Ninja Zombie,

I do want laws that discriminate against a particluar group of people to have a rational basis with some support. So, for the most part, do the courts which is why same-sex marriage tends to do better in the courts than in referenda. I am not sure why you find this surprising or why you think it would lead to Burkean conservatism. In many cases discrimination has been the default and demanding a justification for discrimination is the change.

So far as argument you tend to argue that applying a principle in this case will lead to bad consequences if applied in general. But I have not seen one example of this from you that is plausible. If this was a real danger than it should be easy to come up with cases. But bad faith arguments like failing to note that gay couples raise kids does not establish that there is some problem in applying the principle.

Can you come up with a single example of an actual case in which a law discriminates against a particular group using a rational basis as flimsy as that used to oppose same-sex marriage? Maybe you have a point, but absent an even marginally compelling example I don't see any reason to think so.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

The Ninja Zombie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:21:09 -0000

Lon, a rational basis is not the same as an airtight proof. It's simply a plausible argument that the policy makes sense, and this is the basis the courts use.

For example, "it is illegal for the wind to blow across your property" has no rational basis.

Do you really want to demand proof that a policy is beneficial before the government is permitted to implement it? That's close to Burkean conservativism but very far from liberalism.

Given such a requirement, it seems as if you should be arguing against every government program not supported by strong evidence: minimum wage, cash for clunkers, Obamacare, etc.

In the contemporary US, we believe that deciding such questions is explicitly the province of the legislative process. If congress/ballot initiatives/etc say minimum wage is good and gay marriage is bad (based on murky/incomplete evidence, intuition of legislators, etc), so be it.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

LonBecker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:31:26 -0000

Ninja Zombie,

It is not so easy to give a rational basis if one grounds ones arguments in good faith. That is the problem that the opponents of same sex marriage had in the California courts.

Given that many opposite sex marraiges do not include children, and many same-sex marraiges do, saying that the point of marriage is to protect children doesn't really help.

As I said, if you can show that children in same-sex marriages are harmed because of it, then one would have a reasonable case. But there is no evidence supporting such a claim. And fortunately most courts don't recognize pulling such claims out of ones ass. (Ok the California courts didn't, maybe some others would).

You are right that it is very easy to come up with such justifications if one is acting in bad faith. But I am still waiting for an actual good faith justification of such discrimination.

You are right that if by non-discrimination one means that government cannot ever make distinctions, then this would lead from same-sex marriage to polygamy (and I suppose even to marrying ones pets). But nobody is actually arguing for such a thing.

And the fact that there are real differences between polygamy and two party marriage and are only phony ones between same-sex marriage and opposite sex marriage does make a difference.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

LonBecker — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:23:15 -0000

Nuada,

If this is the same case I read about the problem for the church was even more stark. The land in question received a tax break from the state under a provision designed to increase the land available for public accomodations. So the church maintained ownership of the property but allowed the community free usage.

When the church decided that it did not want its property used by a gay couple, the state said, pretty obviously, that the land was no longer being used as a public accomodation and so did not qualify for the tax break associated with private property being used as a public accomodation.

You are right it does not show anything about the passage of gay marriage. In fact it does not say anything beyond that if one gets a benefit based on qualifying for a particular program, one loses that benefit when one no longer qualifies.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

raorao — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:55:42 -0000

I'm not the first or the last to say this, TNC, but this is an amazing piece of writing. Thanks again.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

msb — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:39:49 -0000

Dear PeteL,

I don't understand your answer. The chicks responded to Lorenz, rather than geese, because he was intervening with them. How is this not learning?

I think the word "preference" is determining your view of causes. Try "orientation" and see where it leads you. It leads me to laugh when people talk darkly of "the homosexual agenda"; for me, they might just as well talk about the blue-eyed or right-handed agendas.

I have to go now, but I'll check in tomorrow to see what the community members in the western hemisphere have to add.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

AJH — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:32:27 -0000

Petel, when did your heterosexual preference form, and based on what stimuli?

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

PeteL — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:24:17 -0000

msb,

FWIW, the implication of Lorenz/Tinbergen is not that homosexuality is "learned" or "a choice", any more than those chicks' attachment to the supernormal, unhelpful stimuli was a choice. Surely those chicks weren't 'choosing' attachment to the supernormal stimuli, but said attachment was nevertheless permanent. There's just a critical window in which such attachment forms, much like there is a critical window for humans in which sexual preference identity forms.

I've yet to encounter a convincing explanation for why sexual preference develops in a substantially different manner in humans.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

The Ninja Zombie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:10:27 -0000

Black Yank, you are not answering my question.

"For someone who is gay to marry a straight person and pretend that's who they want to spend the rest of their life with, they have to deny who they are, making a mockery of marriage and, indeed, their very own lives."

For someone who is voluntarily single to marry and pretend they want to spend the rest of their life with another person, they have to deny who they are, making a mockery of marriage and, indeed, their very own lives.

I'm not arguing that a ban on gay marriage is good policy or legitimate. I'm simply asking for a consistent justification of why discrimination against the single is acceptable, but discrimination against gays is not.

It's the same question I'd ask of a person claiming (in the Jim Crow era) that "Asians should be promoted to White, it isn't fair to treat Asians as badly as other colored folk. See, they are the same color as whitey."

And (separately), I'm also asking why marital preferences are considered special in a way that others are not. I understand that marital preferences are strongly held, perhaps more so than homeownership preferences. But what is the difference in kind (rather than degree)?

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

msb — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:43:16 -0000

Not for geese.

But human sexuality is innate, like eye colour or handedness; one is born a certain way. If sexual orientation were learned from the surrounding culture, there would be no gay/lesbian people my age. I had never heard of either til I was in college, and would certainly never have gotten an inkling from my schoolroom, tv, cinema or radio. Seems to me the persistence of gay/lesbian identity in the face of constant cultural condemnation and discouragement is a good argument for its naturalness.

If you think your children are going to be taught sexual behaviour in the classroom, American schools have gotten an awful lot more interesting since my day. Of course, even in my day, the lesson that all humans are heterosexual didn't take for a substantial number of people.

Re: A Thought On Gay Marriage In Maine

PeteL — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:55:12 -0000

You know, if I lived in Maine, I would have voted in support of the full equal status of gay marriage, as civil rights trump just about all other concerns. But I would have done so with some trepidation, as the father of young children, in consideration of what the full normalization of the gay experience might mean for imprinting on my tots. An incremental increase in the likelihood of my kids imprinting "gay" does not justify preventing others achieving full equal status.

However, if one of my peers drew a different conclusion, I would not fire back that he or she was a "hate-filled bigot". By resorting to such language, one effectively argues that homosexuality, unlike Lorenz' chicks mother-following behavior, has no circumstantial component to it.

Among other things, that's a pretty strange conclusion for this community to draw, given its priorities. As you well know, there are many many whites out there who believe that the struggles of minorities in the inner city are reflective of inherent flaws in the character of said minorities, that imprinting plays no role in the difficulties therein.

On this thread, we find that opposition to full normal status for gays is tantamount to hate-filled bigotry, even where children are concerned, therefore disregarding the importance of imprinting in the development of sexual preference.

Does this community really want to dispense with the concept of imprinting?