US Supreme Court Does the Right Thing

Liberty and Justice, HT Chris Clarke

 

 

Same sex marriage is a constitutional right for all USAians, regardless of the homophobic, religiously-motivated bigotry in 14 state legislatures.

Chief Justice Kennedy writing the 5-4 decision:

“The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of a person,

… under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.

..  The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry,

… [They] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. </blockquote>

And Antonin Scalia displays his usual regressive Catholic assholishness: <blockquote>The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,

Suck it, Popey-boy.

 

HT: Chris Clarke, image, and Ophelia Benson

 

Edit: Should have been Justice Kennedy, not Chief justice Kennedy.  Thanks for the reminder, Kantian Naturalist :).

853 thoughts on “US Supreme Court Does the Right Thing

  1. Mung: I had asked above about your two friends each with a child and what demands each child had upon the non-biological parent (if any). Do the two children have equal rights with respect to each parent and does each parent have equal rights with respect to each child?

    Surely that is as much an issue for heterosexual parents (say both biological parents). Some families work this out pretty well, and others have problems.

  2. fifthmonarchyman: As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
    (1Sa 18:1)

    Ooh, yeah, baby.

    Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.”

    If this account were of a male and a female character, you would instantly know that they’re romantically involved evidenced by the intimate gifts. If this happened in, say, your church today, you would have no problem recognizing it as love at first sight,

    The only reason people claim it’s not romantic/sexual love is because they’re fixated on the idea that (biblical) male heroes cannot be gay.

    Okay, let’s see Jonathan’s father, King Saul, reacting to Jonathan when David isn’t at dinner:

    You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen [David] the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?

    Yeah, sure, that sounds just like a father who is worried about the intense platonic friendship.

    Err, no, the other thing. The homo-erotic love affair.

    Note Saul’s reference to the shame of the mother’s nakedness. That’s intentional (by the bible writer), showing that Saul thinks Jonathan has brought a specifically sexual shame on their house, not just the possible shame of having a misplaced loyalty of friendship.

    Next day:

    After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most.

    Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.’”

    They kissed, heartbroken.

    Yeah, that sure sounds platonic.

    Later, Jonathan dies in a battle, David rends his clothes in deep mourning, and writes poetry to his dead beloved.

    Greatly beloved were you to me;
    your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

    Oh, poor David, losing the one true love of your life.

    Later still, David has been anointed king; he honors his youthful covenant with Jonathan by caring for Jonathan’s son.

    When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.
    David said, “Mephibosheth!”
    “At your service,” he replied.
    “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan

    The equivalent of gay marriage (their covenant) and then adoption of the partner’s child by the surviving spouse. Right there in the bible.

    None so blind as they who will not see, even while they’re reading the very words in black and white.

    Man oh man, what a world.

    You do know that millions of faithful christians are gay, don’t you? You do know that your god created millions upon millions of gay people, don’t you? You do know that your god wants you to love and respect and treat with equal dignity all the children who are created equal, don’t you?

    If I were you, I’d be terrified that I wasn’t living up to god’s will, here and now.
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    edit: just about everything. This is perfect as it stands, finally. If you don’t agree, don’t tell me. 🙂

  3. Neil, the point is that children have rights too. Sure it’s an issue for heterosexual parents. Given the long tradition of families where the children are born of the same heterosexual couple, let’s assume that the rights of the children are equal with respect to both of those parents.

    If the child dies of malnourishment do you think the father has a defense in claiming it was the mother’s duty to feed the child but not his?

    My question is, are the children being provided equal protection too?

    If the decision grants same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, is that the full story?

    Let’s de-personalize it a bit. A gay male has a child [he is the biological father]. He marries another gay male who also has a child [he is also the biological father]. They get a divorce. To which parent do the children go and which child deserves child support from which parent?

    While you and others get to celebrate the decision there are countless others who now get to try to figure out it’s effects on children. Do you deny this?

  4. hotshoe_

    A simple google search seems to indicate that homosexuals in Jewish society were put to death.

    I link to this site but avoid citing it because I don’t care to “own” it according to the latest “fuzzy Elizabethan” rules.

    http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibh3.htm

    Do I advocate putting homosexuals to death? Absolutely not!

    I link as well to the following page but I avoid citing it because I don’t care to “own” it according to the latest “fuzzy Elizabethan” rules:

    http://www.torahphilosophy.com/2010/04/beheading-orthodox-jewish-punishment.html

    Do I advocate putting homosexuals to death? Absolutely not!

    I have a simple question to which I honestly do not know the answer.

    Were homosexuals put to death in the USA as a matter of law, and if so when did that practice cease and why?

  5. Mung: Neil, the point is that children have rights too. Sure it’s an issue for heterosexual parents.

    It’s the same issue. The recent supreme court decision does not affect it at all, as far as I can tell. In the Chicago area, we frequently hear of DCFS stepping in for such problems with heterosexual parents. And sometimes DCFS screws up, too.

    Unless you can explain why this is a different issue from the heterosexual case, I don’t see its relevance to this thread.

    While you and others get to celebrate the decision …

    In all honesty, I’m not celebrating anything. The decision doesn’t affect me, as far as I can tell. And I am not aware that it affects any close friends or relatives. I think it was a good decision, but it isn’t for me to celebrate it.

  6. Mung: Let’s de-personalize it a bit. A gay male has a child [he is the biological father]. He marries another gay male who also has a child [he is also the biological father]. They get a divorce. To which parent do the children go and which child deserves child support from which parent?

    While you and others get to celebrate the decision there are countless others who now get to try to figure out it’s effects on children. Do you deny this?

    Well, they were going to have to figure out the effects on the children in any case, before or after marriage legalization.

    I know you don’t think that gay men have never lived together before, nor that gay men have never fathered their own biological children before. It doesn’t take modern technology or new laws.

    What’s changing is that marriage equality means gay couples who wish to parent children now have a safe status within which to do so, and tried-and-true legal procedures (adoption and divorce laws) for what should happen to the children (whether biologically related to one, or the other, or neither of the parents).

    It’s quite likely that before gay marriage, since there was never a state-recognized relationship to dissolve, a gay couple went their own separate ways without an actual “divorce”, and each did what they saw fit with his/her own child(ren). Of course, it was possible that a gay couple had mutually adopted each other’s children, but – surprise, surprise – that was another area of discrimination related to the illegality of gay marriage; states didn’t have to allow adoption by gay couples and could refuse solely on the grounds that they were homosexual.

    In any case, adoption laws applied equitably to the children of gay parents, same as they apply to stepchildren or adopted children of straight parents, will determine the children’s “rights” in the event a gay couple separates.

    In the US we have pretty good ideals for deciding cases on the basis of what’s best for the specific child in a relationship. (Although I know petrushka can testify, not always so good in practice,) Now that we have a legal framework in all 50 states, with gay parents likely to formalize their relationship and therefore likely to involve the law if they decide to separate, with family-court mediators, with CASA for the children (Court Appointed Special Advocates), I expect we’ll be just about as happy with the results in gay divorce / child custody cases as we have been all along with them in straight divorce / child custody cases.

    Or just as unhappy.

    Well, one thing will surely be different. We won’t have the MRA contingent whinging about how prejudiced the courts are against them and lying about how only fathers ever have to pay child support.

    That, at least, is something to celebrate.

  7. Mung: Were homosexuals put to death in the USA as a matter of law, and if so when did that practice cease and why?

    I have never heard of any person legally put to death by the state in the US solely for the “crime” of being homosexual, rather than for, say, the crime of same-sex rape. Doesn’t exactly make the kid’s history books about the glorious founding fathers — sodomy was a death-penalty crime in the colonies (although note that “sodomy” at that time was defined as including sex with animals and consensual anal sex between a man and a woman as well as between a man and a man) — the ten or so recorded executions for “sodomy” were for assault-type crimes. Sometime after independence, the thirteen new states each revised sodomy from a capital crime to a serious felony. Interestingly, this crime was almost never prosecuted ‘before 1880, even when such illegal activities were notorious in the community” * … unless the case was particularly violent.

    It got worse again in the early/mid 20th century. States took a new interest in encouraging procreative sex and “protecting” women and children (although rationally it’s impossible to say how prosecuting consensual adult male-male sodomy ever protected any women or children). They revised penal codes for new harsher penalties for sodomy (not death, but up to life in prison) and increased prosecution for sodomy that would have previously been ignored because not an assault or rape-like incident. Of course, anti-sodomy laws occasionally snared a married male-female couple during this period … anti-sexual hysteria at its most petty. This came to an end in 2003 when the Texas state sodomy law was struck down.

    I am aware that real-or-perceived homosexuality of a defendant sometimes results in worse treatment by the police, prosecutors, courts and/or juries for any actual crime (other than sodomy) they did commit or are accused of committing. On the other hand, I hear that being identified as gay and needing protective custody from the violent inmates of the regular jail population can be a sort of blessing in disguise, the “gay wing” is likely to be more humane.

    On the third hand, gay people being murdered specifically because the murderer hates them for being gay is still way too common, and such murderers often receive ridiculously light sentences — without stretching the point too much, you could say the state is in a real sense complicit with those deaths because law enforcement doesn’t treat gay bashings and gay murders as a serious issue, leading assailants to figure they will get away with it.

    On the fourth hand, the US is the world’s most violent “civilized” nation, being the only first world nation which still allows capital punishment, having murder rates double or triple every European nation, and encouraging the kind of war-minded population which is willing to support a military budget larger than the rest of the world put together … so I guess we can’t be surprised when gay people are executed non-judicially.

    And finally, the US is NOT the worst nation in that regard. There are still a horrible number of countries where homosexuality is a felony: scum-sucking centers of the universe like Somalia and Afghanistan. There are five countries where the death penalty is currently applied merely for the crime of being found to be homosexual. Guess which. Our fucking favorite allies, Saudi Arabia, for one.

    Why do you ask, Mung?
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    * long essay; Sodomy in America; Margot Canaday on William Eskridge’s book Dishonorable Passions

  8. Maybe it’s the purist in me, but there is something really troubling about the word “homosexual”. I mean, mixing Greek and Latin roots like that just doesn’t feel natural. It should be either “homoerotikon” or “simulsexual”!

  9. I’ve got to check out of here for awhile.

    Play nice, children.

    Catch y’all on the flip side.

  10. Mung: I link to this site but avoid citing it because I don’t care to “own” it according to the latest “fuzzy Elizabethan” rules.

    It was a joke, Mung ffs. What I meant is that if you cite something in support of an argument, and it turns out that your citation doesn’t support your argument, then you need either to defend the cited argument or retract your case.

  11. fifthmonarchyman: Some of us would like to go forward to principles expressed way back in the first century but never actually tried.

    Like “Love your neighbour as yourself”?

    Seems to me that’s precisely the principle that underlies marriage equality.

  12. Kantian Naturalist: To recap:

    (1) in a just society, all persons have equal access to natural and social primary goods (a Rawlsian premise that I neglected to make explicit but which I thought was obvious from what I was saying);

    Okay. (Never read any Rawls, never had any intro to his ideas, and from what I see from you, I will not be a fan.)

    Kantian Naturalist:
    (2) privilege [def] = a person is privileged if she or he belongs to a social group that enjoys different degrees of access, or ease of access, to natural and social primary goods due to the structure of basic institutions;
    (3) hence, privilege is unjust;

    (3) is false. The easier access to goods by a certain group may be due to these additional reasons:

    – The group simply lives closer, if the goods are material, e.g. a lake or river that provides potable water.
    – The group has been granted the privilege (!) by the rest of society to administer the just distribution of the goods.

    And I’m sure you’ll agree, there’s nothing inherently unjust in these reasons.

    Since you construe “heterosexual privilege” similarly by overlooking these critical nuances, I dismiss the rest of what you say.

  13. hotshoe_: We won’t have the MRA contingent whinging about how prejudiced the courts are against them

    I don’t want to de-rail, but the courts ARE prejudiced against fathers. [spam filter ate this…]

    ETA: I loved your treatment of the story of David and Jonathan. Perhaps this is what is worrying VJT et al. Now that gay marriage is recognized, the rubes may start wondering about the more homoerotic passages in the bible…after that, they might start to question Laban and Leah’s morality…

  14. Mung: Furthermore, everyone has different degrees of access. Blind people do not have the same degree of access to books as sighted people. In a just society should we outlaw books or blindness?

    It should certainly make audio and braille books available. And there’s no reason not to call them books.

  15. DNA_Jock says,

    ETA: I loved your treatment of the story of David and Jonathan. Perhaps this is what is worrying VJT et al. Now that gay marriage is recognized, the rubes may start wondering about the more homoerotic passages in the bible…

    You Totally missed the point,

    David and Jonathan were not closet sex partners.

    They were were men who loved each other deeply and made a covenant together.

    That covenant was and is recognized and celebrated by the “rubes” as being special and holy. It is even called an oath from the Lord at one point. I would not be surprised if the local bakers made a cake for the occasion.

    It was not a Marriage covenant. In many ways it was seen as being superior to a marriage covenant. .

    It did not involve sex so of course a covenant like this would never even occur to folks in today’s sex focused world. Such a bond is inconceivable now. You proved as much when you called the episode “homoerotic”

    Today all we have available is “just friends” or perhaps a bromance.

    If you want to proclaim your deep love and commitment to someone of the same sex in America you have to agree to be sex partners

    Isn’t progress grand. The ancients were so primitive

    peace

  16. fifthmonarchyman:

    Sez you.

    If you want to proclaim your deep love and commitment to someone of the same sex in America you have to agree to be sex partners

    Oh. If you’re right, I am going to have a very awkward conversation in the near future.
    I had not realized that the SCOTUS decision had such far-reaching consequences.
    Out of curiosity, what about a “band of brothers” situation? Is it sufficient for me to have sex with each member of my soccer team individually, or do we have to organize an orgy? Could be a scheduling nightmare.
    😮

  17. Your sarcasm again proves my point.

    You can no longer even conceive of a relationship that our ancestor treasured and honored. You don’t even know what you have lost.

    The sexual revolution is complete.

    lets celebrate

    peace

  18. Boo-hoo! 🙁

    All my friends are literally disappearing now. I wanted to cancel my family’s dinner party plans for this weekend, but when I tried to call those (former) friends, I got the message that I’d have to sleep with them or they wouldn’t even talk to me!!

    I can’t stop crying about this loss, and I don’t understand why fifthmalarky man and I are the only ones who are feeling its depth. It’s the worst thing since talkies, IMHO.

    Today at lunch, I’m going to walk by myself. 🙁

  19. fifth:

    If you want to proclaim your deep love and commitment to someone of the same sex in America you have to agree to be sex partners

    You really need to get out more, fifth.

  20. Hey Walto,

    I wonder what you would say if I treated homosexual relationships with the same condescension and sarcasm as you display here.

    No doubt the words bigot and homophobe would be used.

    I am amused that you still can’t see that I’m not discussing the loss of “friends”.

    “Just friends” is a category that is allowed in the new paradigm.

    “Family” is also allowed as long as it is defined so as not to interfere in anyway with this week’s chosen sex partnership.

    You don’t even know what you have lost.

    peace

  21. fifthmonarchyman:
    Hey Walto,

    I wonder what you would say if I treated homosexual relationships with the same condescension and sarcasm as you display here.

    No doubt the words bigot and homophobe would be used.

    I am amused that you still can’t see that I’m not discussing the loss of “friends”.

    “Just friends” is a category that is allowed in the new paradigm.

    “Family” is also allowed as long as it is defined so as not to interfere in anyway with this week’s chosen sex partnership.

    You don’t even know what you have lost.

    peace

    I’m writing in this fashion, because this “argument” of yours is without doubt one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. I honestly don’t think it’s worthy of any other sort of response. Listen closely: IT’S UTTERLY RIDICULOUS and TOTALLY WITHOUT ANY MERIT.

    Got it?

  22. fifthmonarchyman: Your sarcasm again proves my point.

    You can no longer even conceive of a relationship that our ancestor treasured and honored. You don’t even know what you have lost.

    No, not sarcasm actually. Rather, I was indulging in reductio ad absurdum.
    Perhaps if you re-read my comment you will realize that I have such a relationship, so obviously I can conceive of one. I just don’t share your confidence that David and Jonathan had such a platonic relationship. To me the story is ambiguous.
    Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
    You are the one that’s coming across as sex-obsessed…

  23. Erik,

    Your counterexamples do not show that (3) is false; they simply show that you do not accept (1) to begin with.

    For if one were to begin with the thought that a just society requires all persons have equal access to natural and social primary goods, then deviations from that presumptive equality would not be morally justified. Neither closeness of location nor being granted the privilege by the rest of society would count as a morally justified deviation from basic equality of primary goods.

    Maybe part of the problem here is that I haven’t explained much about what I mean by “primary goods”. Rawls starts off with the thought that everyone is capable of formulating for him or herself a rational life-plan — a conception of how they want their lives to go. But, in order to realize a life-plan, we need both natural goods (food, water, physical safety, etc.) and also social goods (income or economic independence, education, etc.). (Think about these in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if that helps.)

    These primary goods are, as Rawls puts it, “what someone wants regardless of whatever else he wants”. So, chocolate is not a primary good, because not everyone wants chocolate. But physical safety is a primary good, because everyone wants physical safety, and because one cannot construct a rational life-plan if one is constantly afraid for one’s physical well-being.

    In fact there’s much more to Rawls’s theory of justice than this one principle — for one thing, there’s a second principle! — and then a whole lot of details.

    That said: you asked for an argument. I gave you an argument. The one criticism you gave of the argument rests on a basic misunderstanding of what I wrote — the criticism is directed against (1), not against (3). I’m sorry to hear that you’re not familiar with one of the most influential works of 20th-century Western political philosophy, one that has been translated into over a dozen languages. Heck, Chinese students who were crushed to death by tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had Chinese translations of Theory in Justice in their hands. (Or so I was told by a Chinese philosopher long ago. He might have been making it up.)

  24. Kantian Naturalist:
    Erik,
    Your counterexamples do not show that (3) is false; they simply show that you do not accept (1) to begin with.

    For if one were to begin with the thought that a just society requires all persons have equal access to natural and social primary goods, then deviations from that presumptive equality would not be morally justified. Neither closeness of location nor being granted the privilege by the rest of society would count as a morally justified deviation from basic equality of primary goods.

    Oh dear. Let’s try again.

    I said nothing about someone’s place of living or a specific privilege being morally justified. I was making these trivial self-evident points:

    – It is how things are in real life.
    – It cannot be said to be unjust.

    If you disagree, then go ahead and explain why it’s unjust to have a house by the river.

    However, at closer inspection, I indeed reject (1), but the reason is rather subtle.

    Rawls: (1) in a just society, all persons have equal access to natural and social primary goods

    It should be: In a just society, all persons should have equal access to natural and primary goods. Because, for obvious reasons, they cannot have equal access to the same goods at the same time. This does not apply to merely material goods, but also to immaterial goods. I brought a material example because this makes the point as plain as possible.

    Formulated my way, the first premise becomes a moral point by itself: Things should be a certain way, but aren’t, therefore let’s see how to solve it.

    I have no quibble with whatever you mean by primary goods, but the first Rawlsian premise, when accepted uncritically, leads to pretty bad consequences. For example, a foreign corporation may approach a primitive tribe whose land contains profitable minerals. On the premise, the corporation would get “equal access” to the minerals automatically, without question. Certainly not what Rawls intended. So, what was he thinking?

  25. DNA_Jock: No, not sarcasm actually.

    Mine of course WERE sarcasm. But the idea that prohibiting states from disallowing gay marriages prevents people from having friendly non-sexual relationships (and people ought to be soooo sad about this “loss” 🙁 ) is simply too ridiculous to take seriously. It’s utterly bozo, astounding that anyone could legitimately put it forth, and, frankly, deserves even more farcical comments than I’ve been able to drum up.

    Yet.

  26. Erik:
    Certainly not what Rawls intended. So, what was he thinking?

    Perhaps he had a second principle that the most disadvantaged had priority

  27. DNA Jock,

    I just don’t share your confidence that David and Jonathan had such a platonic relationship. To me the story is ambiguous.

    That you can’t quite see unambiguous platonic love in this relationship is convincing evidence that the sexual revolution is complete.

    I’m sure you think the same about the disciple who Jesus loved. That reclining at the table beside Jesus must be some sort of sexual code phrase.

    if you re-read my comment you will realize that I have such a relationship, so obviously I can conceive of one.

    I’m sure that if you did indeed have such a relationship with someone of the same sex you would have been forced to have a “very awkward conversation” long ago. And you surely have had to continue to have such conversations repeatedly with friends and family every time the issue comes up.

    Not to mention the the conversations you must have when dealing with the government or hospitals for example

    Most importantly you have to deal with the reality that your mutual commitment is now seen as a little less valuable and genuine than one with sex as it’s center.

    It’s the world we live in now.

    peace

  28. Kantian Naturalist: This is why Nietzsche was correct to say that “only that which has no history can be defined”

    That’s a nice quote, KN. Where does it come from?

  29. In reply to the first counterexample — is it unjust to own a house by the river? — I would say “no”, because having such a house is not something that everyone wants, regardless of whatever else they want.

    Remember, we opened up this can of worms because I needed to defend my use of the term “privileged”. Being sympathetic to Rawls, I decided to explicate the concept of injustice in terms of an unfair distribution of primary goods, and then explicate the concept of privilege in terms of membership in dominant social groups correlates with unfair distribution of primary goods. Maybe there are problems with this approach to conceptualizing privilege.

    A trivial point: since *just* is already a normative concept, I treat it as redundant to say “in a just society, all persons should have equal access to natural and primary goods”. In a just society, all persons do have equal access to natural and social primary goods; and all societies should be just societies (to the extent possible). But bear in mind that I’m characterizing primary goods with a lot more generality than you seem to appreciate. Owning a nice house isn’t a primary good, because it’s not something that everyone wants regardless of whatever else they want. Physical safety is a primary good, but that’s compatible with lots of different implementations of physical safety. What counts as physical safety in a big city is going to be different from what counts as physical safety in a rural area. (This is, by the way, why liberals and conservatives can’t agree on gun control — because the culture of gun use and ownership is very different in urban and rural areas.)

    Erik: For example, a foreign corporation may approach a primitive tribe whose land contains profitable minerals. On the premise, the corporation would get “equal access” to the minerals automatically, without question. Certainly not what Rawls intended. So, what was he thinking?

    I take it that a primary good would include the right to determine what happens to the land on which one is living, since that is plausibly a social primary good — something that everyone wants, regardless of whatever else they want. But corporate profits aren’t primary goods, so the corporation’s interest in profit doesn’t trump the rights of the tribe.

  30. walto,

    Genealogy of Morality, Second Treatise, section 13:

    the concept “punishment” in fact no longer represents a single meaning at all but rather an entire synthesis of “meanings”: the previous history of punishment in general, the history of its exploitation for the most diverse purposes, finally crystallizes into a kind of unity that is difficult to dissolve, difficult to analyze and — one must emphasize — is completely and utterly undefinable. (Today it is impossible to say for sure why we actually punish: all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically summarized elude definition: only that which has no history is definable.) (p. 53 of the Clark/Swensen edition).

    I see no reason why “marriage” is different from “punishment”; a genealogy of marriage would be quite illuminating.

  31. walto: I like that–it’s almost Kripkean!

    Dear god, I hope not! Then again, I think of it as being almost Sellarsian. (If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Even if it’s a really good hammer.)

  32. Well, I guess it isn’t really THAT Kripkean–there’s no initial “baptisms” or causal chains or anything like that. But a historical determination trumping a definition is what made me think of him.

    A lot of people don’t realize that in his (little known) “Lectures on Philosophy,” G.E. Moore actually proposed a causal theory of names. It’s not too well thought through, I don’t think, but it’s the earliest version I’d ever heard of. I’m pretty sure that nobody who later worked out that theory–like Donnellan, Putnam, and Kripke–had ever seen it. It was completely original and never influenced anybody, but then–POOF–a newer model showed up all on its own!

    Definitely gonna have to take a look at Geneology of Morals again. Been a long time.

  33. Mung,

    I had asked above about your two friends each with a child and what demands each child had upon the non-biological parent (if any). Do the two children have equal rights with respect to each parent and does each parent have equal rights with respect to each child? Didn’t see an answer.

    Sorry, missed that while skimming through.

    It’s an interesting question. The children gestated in the same womb, but each is genetically related to a different father. I have no idea what would happen legally if the two men were to divorce. I would hope that both children would be equally the responsibility of both men, since I think that love and attention is what makes one a parent more than genetic relationship. I suspect that some lawyers are going to make a lot of money and cause a lot of pain before the legalities of relationships like this are codified.

  34. Kantian Naturalist:
    Remember, we opened up this can of worms because I needed to defend my use of the term “privileged”.Being sympathetic to Rawls, I decided to explicate the concept of injustice in terms of an unfair distribution of primary goods, and then explicate the concept of privilege in terms of membership in dominant social groups correlates with unfair distribution of primary goods. Maybe there are problems with this approach to conceptualizing privilege.

    Of course I remember.

    Kantian Naturalist:
    But bear in mind that I’m characterizing primary goods with a lot more generality than you seem to appreciate. Owning a nice house isn’t a primary good, because it’s not something that everyone wants regardless of whatever else they want.

    Everybody needs a place to live and it’s physically impossible for anyone else to occupy the same place when there’s someone already there. Moreover, since the world is made up the way it is, clean water here but not there, arable land there but not here, etc. it’s physically impossible for everyone to have equal access to primary goods.

    The equal access has to be organised. Therefore there must be organisers. The organisers will see what’s meaningful to organise. For example, when too many people want to live by the lake, it’s not quite meaningful to try to cram everyone there. Those who were there earlier will have priority. Priority is privilege. The way you tried to construe privilege, you wanted all privilege to be automatically unjust, always. Which was one flaw with your examples and explanations.

    So, it’s not meaningful to equalise everything, because there are things which cannot be equalised and circumstances that don’t allow unconditional equality. Those things and circumstances make it the case that there’s always some inevitable inequality and there’s nothing unjust about inevitable inequality. It’s simply how the world is. Failure to acknowledge this has been another flaw with your examples and explanations.

    The things that you want to equalise must be real and true primary goods, things that really must be equalised no matter what, because otherwise there’s obvious indisputable injustice. The third flaw with your examples and explanations has been that you have not even remotely clarified how same-sex marriage goes under some primary good.

  35. fifthmonarchyman,

    “Boston Marriage”, “bromance” “new found attraction”

    Even your attempts at humor prove my point.
    It’s friends or “sort of like sex partners” in your worldview.

    Not in mine. I wan’t joking with my bromance comment. Contrary to your assertion, non-sexual love is alive and well.

  36. fifthmonarchyman:

    “Boston Marriage”, “bromance” “new found attraction”

    Even your attempts at humor prove my point.
    It’s friends or “sort of like sex partners” in your worldview.

    Patrick:

    Not in mine. I wan’t joking with my bromance comment. Contrary to your assertion, non-sexual love is alive and well.

    Fifth,

    You’ve withdrawn so far into your Us-vs-Them shell that you’ve lost touch with reality.

    This is just bizarre:

    If you want to proclaim your deep love and commitment to someone of the same sex in America you have to agree to be sex partners

    It reminds me of this: Scientologists vs the “Wogs”

  37. fifthmonarchyman:
    DNA Jock,

    I just don’t share your confidence that David and Jonathan had such a platonic relationship. To me the story is ambiguous.

    That you can’t quite see unambiguous platonic love in this relationship is convincing evidence that the sexual revolution is complete.

    I guess you are rather easily ‘convinced’ then.

    I’m sure you think the same about the disciple who Jesus loved. That reclining at the table beside Jesus must be some sort of sexual code phrase.

    Why even bring this up? You really seem to have a strange fixation on (potentially) homoerotic imagery. Makes me wonder…

    if you re-read my comment you will realize that I have such a relationship, so obviously I can conceive of one.

    I’m sure that if you did indeed have such a relationship with someone of the same sex you would have been forced to have a “very awkward conversation” long ago. And you surely have had to continue to have such conversations repeatedly with friends and family every time the issue comes up.

    This is completely and utterly deranged. The level of certainty about my personal life that you display is deeply, deeply weird. Are you projecting, perhaps? 😮

    Not to mention the the conversations you must have when dealing with the government or hospitals for example

    I actually typed up an account of a weird but entertaining interaction regarding “next of kin” and hospitals, but I haven’t posted it here, as it`s rather tangential. Maybe if I did post it , it might help clear up some of the byzantine misconceptions that you seem to harbor about my personal life. I have absolutely no clue whatsoever what you are getting at here. Would you care to explain?

    Most importantly you have to deal with the reality that your mutual commitment is now seen as a little less valuable and genuine than one with sex as it’s center.

    Well, it isn’t an exclusive relationship. And we are not planning on raising any children as a couple, although it is true that I have helped him (a teeny bit) raise his kids, and he has helped me (a lot) raise mine. But I fail to see why it would be “now seen” as any less “valuable and genuine” than one with sex at its center.
    Yikes! I just realized that you actually wrote “with sex as it’s [sic] center”. Would you describe your relationship with your wife as “having sex as its center”? You do seem to have a morbid fascination with other people’s sex lives.

    It’s the world we live in now.

    Speak for yourself, mate.

  38. Would you describe your relationship with your wife as “having sex as its center”?

    Consummation is a big part of what makes marriage different from other committed relationships.

    One flesh and all that.

    There are two kinds of relationships in life those in which the principles are one flesh and those where they are not. If it weren’t for the “one flesh” marriage would not be marriage.

    The sexual intimacy among dimorphic individuals is a big part of the symbolic package that human marriage presents to the world.

    quote:

    “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
    (Eph 5:31-32)

    end quote:

    I sure none of this will make any sense to you, Frankly I don’t care at this point. If you can’t see how sex can be at the very center of of the marriage covenant yet not be the most important part of that relationship.

    I would hope you could understand the profound deep symbolism that folks from my side associate with marriage consummation and why calling homosexual partnerships marriage necessarily destroys that symbolism.

    I would also hope you would understand why I believe the elevation of same sex partnerships that involve intercourse above those that don’t is profoundly unfair and unjust and detrimental to society.

    But I’ve come to expect that folks from your side are incapable of looking at the other side in issues like this.

    Just know that this issue is not going away. We will continue to pick at this scab. Your side had the chance to make the system equal and instead you chose to promote one kind of relationship at the expense of others. In the end this will not stand it can’t.

    Well, it isn’t an exclusive relationship. And we are not planning on raising any children as a couple,

    Well then it’s clear then that your relationship is not the sort I’m referring to here. In the relationships I’m talking about the principles are deeply involved in each others family matters they are committed to each other in everything.

    For example when Jesus died the disciple he loved assumed his family responsibility to his mother instead of it reverting to his younger siblings as was the normal practice at the time.

    In the same way Jonathan abandoned his own father for David and Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth was adopted by David and became a prince at the time of Jonathan’s death.

    Clearly we are talking about seriously committed relationships here. You just don’t see that sort of thing now days.

    If we did the relationship would seem odd and strange and probably secretly sexual in nature

    Pity

    peace

  39. fifth:

    The sexual intimacy among dimorphic individuals is a big part of the symbolic package that human marriage presents to the world… I would hope you could understand the profound deep symbolism that folks from my side associate with marriage consummation and why calling homosexual partnerships marriage necessarily destroys that symbolism.

    We understand that folks from your side are obsessed with bodies and their allowable combinations, though we roll our eyes at it. And we pity you for letting your fixation on “dimorphism” overshadow the things that really matter in a marriage: love, respect, and commitment.

  40. “anti-family atheists”? Yeah, suuure.

    Chile, Uruguay, Ireland and France attempted to introduce agreed UN language to the resolution to focus the panel discussion on the human rights of individual family members, bearing in mind that “in different cultural, political and social systems various forms of the family exist.”

    Bloody atheists, the lot of them.
    So who voted in favor of debating this amendment?

    Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Montenegro, Peru, South Korea, Romania, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, United Kingdom and the United States of America.

    And who voted not to allow any debate ?

    Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, China, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela

    Also in your camp, Greg:
    Bangladesh, El Salvador, Mauritania, Qatar, Tunisia and Uganda.
    If that’s a victory for “family”, then its a rather medieval concept of family, esp. regarding womens` rights.

  41. DNA_Jock: If that’s a victory for “family”, then its a rather medieval concept of family, esp. regarding womens` rights.

    In the vast majority of cases, “family values” is just apologetics for patriarchy.

    (I say “in the vast majority of cases” just to allow for an exception to this generalization, but in fact I’m not aware of any.)

  42. “It is the first time ever in the history of the United Nations that a comprehensive resolution has been passed calling for the protection of the family as a fundamental unit of society, recognizing the prior right of parents to educate their children, and calling on all nations to create family-sensitive policies and recognize their binding obligations under treaty to protect the family.”

    Silly people. There’s no such thing as society. No wonder Gregory got so pissed. Turns out his entire field is a sham.

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