Asymmetrical Information

See now, I understand the point, and why it's a humorous look at why same-sex marriage is "silly," but really, I don't see why the guy shouldn't be allowed to marry his best friend.

Go for it!

If the institution of marriage is a 'natural institution', that is, either hardwired into us by evolution or God, or God using evolution then no one needs to act in defense of marriage. In fact as a 'natural institution' it should be too important AND unnecessary for the State to regulate and interfer with.

That's hilarious. And I agree with Kate. By the way, interpreted correctly of course, gay marriage (and, I suppose, any other kind of marriage) is protected by the Constitution in the 14th amendment.

Unrelatedly, Jane, I recently linked your blog on mine. I was wondering if you prefer to be linked as "Jane Galt" or as "Asymmetrical Information." Thanks.

Incidentally, Jane, I've recently noticed the increase of blogging from Mindles and will change my link to say "Asymmetrical Information."

If "interpreted correctly" means "ignore precedent and do whatever you have to in order to get the result I want," then I suppose so. Barring such a fluid interpretation, I'd say there are plenty of decent arguments for gay marriage, but the 14th Amendment is not among them.

I loved this. I want to marry it.

No, really, I loved it not with respect to the whole gay marriage question, but because it points up the utter absurdity of requiring permission from the state to get married in the first place.

Marriage is, by definition, an entirely private affair. I'm certainly not the first to suggest this, but I say do away with marriage license requirements and "privatize" marriage. It should be a private contract between two willing people.

Michael -- Should marriage then have no legal consequences? No inheritance, no rights as to health insurance coverage or other employment benefits, no presumption as to parentage of children born during the marriage?

Kate, Johnny -- What if he wanted to marry his brother instead of his best friend?

Did anyone read Stanley Kurtz piece, Heather has 3 Parents, in yesterday's National Review? He tries to argue that gay marriage is the first step toward "group marriage". Ridiculous. I don't care what we call it.. marriage, domestic partner benefits, etc. but some type of legal recognition of gay relationships is only fair.

Jane once you've answered the question:
Why can't I marry my best friend?
Obviously, the next question is:
Why can't I marry my best friends?

Denise, if he wanted to marry his brother (and likely, his best friend too) he would be ostracized because that's weird and morally repugnant. That does not, however, give the government the right to legislate against it.

Xrlq, you are right when you say there are many reasons for gay marriage, but you are plainly incorrect to say that the 14th amendment isn't one of them. I'd like you to explain that. Because that amenemdment states that every citizen is entitled to equal protection under the law and it certainly seems that marriage might fall under its range. And I don't believe that to be such a "fluid interpretation." Are you familiar with Ronald Dworkin and his theory of giving the Constitution a moral reading?

More to the point though, there just aren't many arguments against gay marriage.

"Michael -- Should marriage then have no legal consequences? No inheritance"

You're free to leave your assets to whomever you wish. A private marriage contract might include mechanisms to prevent disinheritance of the spouse for the duration of the marriage.

"no rights as to health insurance coverage or other employment benefits"

I don't see any reason for health insurance coverage to be an "employment benefit" in the first place. As long as we're dreaming up fixes to our laws, let's get rid of the tax quirk that puts employers in the business of providing health insurance and, incidentally, making policies for who is and is not rightfully a partner of their employees.

"no presumption as to parentage of children born during the marriage?"

That could go in the contract as well.

"He tries to argue that gay marriage is the first step toward "group marriage". "

He also tries to argue that that would be a bad thing, mainly by asserting that the addition of a third person would require all the participants to give up their "autonomy" or else embrace anarchy. I'm not convinced.

See also: A Taxing Question

The piece reads like a Turing Test.

There certainly is no evolutionary support for marriage. If anything, our biology presumes promiscuity and lots of it. It was discovered a while back that only a third of human sperm actually dedicates itself to reaching and fertilizing and egg. The other two thirds are mainly on the lookout for sperm from competing males and deals with those by blocking or attacking.

Eddie: I agree with you on most of it, but I doubt that taxes are the main reason that employers are the main providers of health insurance. The problem with selling health insurance to individuals is that unhealthy people are a lot more likely to buy it. Individual rates are cranked way up high to cover the costs of insuring a pool that's pretty unhealthy on the average. Employers can make a much better deal, since a pool of employees is not biased towards the sickly, and in fact excludes those that are currently too sick to work.

This issue isn't unique to health insurance - it's called "moral hazard". But it's much harder to control for it with health insurance than with such things as fire insurance.

Take a lesson from cycling - let whoever you currently designate as your spouse wear the yellow shirt. Everybody else wear other colors. Divorcees of course, have no shirt.

Jane, I take it you're not a "New York" magazine reader -- they ran an article about 9 months ago on the trend in NYC where employed workers were claiming out-of-work friends as domestic partners in order to pass on health insurance benefits.

Check it out:

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/urban/gay/features/6182/index.html

Larry wrote: "If the institution of marriage is a 'natural institution', that is, either hardwired into us by evolution or God, or God using evolution then no one needs to act in defense of marriage. In fact as a 'natural institution' it should be too important AND unnecessary for the State to regulate and interfer with."

Hello? WTF? How is "marriage" a 'natural institution?' Perhaps (*perhaps*) MONOGAMY is something like a 'natural' or instinctual desire, but MARRIAGE is a legal contract. There is no requirement to get married to enjoy a monogamous relationship with another person, if ones so desires. But a rational government has an interest in securing an orderly society from which the commingling of assets is not easy to disengage. Marriage is for the benefit of the greater society, NOT for the benefit of those entering into it. In fact, marriage (as practiced in the U.S., anyway) places specific burdens upon its participants (namely, to provide financial and administrative support to a spouse and any children of the marriage). Most states make it difficult to divorce (e.g., costly and time-consuming) because when a marriage is terminated there is an increased risk that the government will have to provide financial and other assistance to the participants.

No one here got the memo on this?

Just to prevent the "he's against gay marriage" flames, I hope it is clear that there is nothing implicit in the above that would disallow anyone (gay, straight, platonic, etc.) from marrying. It is the propagation of Judeo-Christian religious concepts over the secular interests of the state that limit marriage to heterosexuals. This is a perversion of the stated intent of our founding documents to separate the values of a specific religious group from the secular values inherent in humanity.

"Are you familiar with Ronald Dworkin and his theory of giving the Constitution a moral reading?"

Are you familiar with the fact that Ronald Dworkin was among neither the drafters nor the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment?

There certainly is no evolutionary support for marriage.

It can be argued that no evolutionary support exists for, say, the rule of law. And to argue against the rule of law - especially from under its privilege - is fatally contradictory. We might as well explain away every aspect separating man from animal with no intention of practically applying the idea, like people pulling down state jobs calling themselves "anarchists." It's fairly self-evident that from what he's built, man is quite a bit more than the sum of his parts.

Stanley Kurtz has been calling the culture creep with good foresight for years, now; as much as I cherish Andrew Sullivan's work elsewhere, I find that he always loses gay marriage debates with Kurtz.

I never would have believed that polyamory is waiting right behind the first redefinition of legal marriage until a blithely spirited acquaintance of mine back in college entered into a triumvirate. All three participants identified with radical political and social elements. Match that with the stated intentions of fringe-culture groups and one can see a very obvious assault on the current definition of marriage - that ultimately has no reasoned boundaries.

One aspect of morality debates that never cease to simultaneously amuse and disappoint me are the statements originating from a hip, civil-libertarian point of view that tries to separate law from morality, as if laws alone could survive a culture that was hypothetically completely detached from any coherent mores - which is where most of the "the government should stay out of it" arguments inevitably lead if logically followed through.

Now, morality's a funny thing, since heterosexual monogamy as a practiced institution cannot claim perfect adherence by participants to its tenets, a failing celebrated by popular culture; but it's fair to say that the basic premise eschews infidelity. Yes, the player spins two girlfriends for a lark but he's an exception to the rule and, in most circles, considered a cheat. Then there are those of us who do, as squares, play by the rules. The triumvirate mentioned above, however, was multilateral and indefinite by default.

I've always felt that homosexuality suffers from its general, unabashed association with a lifestyle of promiscuity - all you need to do is attend a single performance of Jeffrey and listen to the whoops of the audience. Halfway between tragedy and fodder for jokes, this seriously damages the integrity of the arguments made by proponents for gay marriage.

And honestly - beyond the gay marriage debate - it's saddening to see how flippant many people are about commitment being inextricably linked to monogamy: marriage as an inseparable institution. That goes back to what I said about morality and law; to make one independent from the other is like reducing auto emissions by pulling out the engine.

You miss my point, Michael.

Some elements of human practice are solely inventions of human intelligence and often contrary to the behavior common in the most primitive or natural (depending on what suits the definition better) conditions.

There are those who say marriage is an outgrowth of an innately monogamous nature in humans. The existence of biological mechanism that only have a purpose if promiscuity is common tend to shoot down that idea.

This has no bearing on the right or wrong of marriage and variations on the theme. It means that like many human inventions it can only be discussed in that context and those who try to drag in our distant origins are undermining their argument regardless of which they support.

I understood you the first time, Eric; for what it's worth, only my first paragraph was directed in response to you.

By the same token of what you're saying, our distant origins are, in fact, moot. What matters is what occurs now as ethical, thinking creatures. And it's been a while since primates carried bludgeons, so I'd argue (especially considering disparate cultures having arrived at similar mating and familial conclusions) that as societal creatures the desire for monogamy has become fairly innate. Not by virtue of evolution itself but by transcending and therefore thwarting it.

I think he should be allowed to marry his best friend. Sure, why not? I don't think he should be able to marry someone against their will, or marry a dead person though. Contracts are voluntary and require at least two parties, by definition.

>>There are those who say marriage is an outgrowth of an innately monogamous nature in humans. The existence of biological mechanism that only have a purpose if promiscuity is common tend to shoot down that idea.

On a poinbt of evolutionary biology, no they don't, not necessarily. Promiscuity is only necessarily dangerous to a selfish gene if it results in a male spending time and resources looking after a child which is not his own; in a wholly promiscuous society there would be no need for sperm to compete against one another, as everybody wuld have a roughly equal chance of having a child with everybody else. In other words, one could turn your argument around and say that the existence of mechanisms which recognise that promiscuity is problematic for human beings only makes sense in the context of a general presumption of monogamy.

In general, it is a bad idea to make arguments drawn from population genetics without actually doing the math to see whether an apparent equilbrium is unique.

I'm very torn on this subject.

I married my wife for multiple reasons. I loved her, I wanted to show my commitment to her and I wanted to have children with her. I've always viewed those three things as the key to marriage - love, commitment, procreation.

I don't know the motivation behind gay marriage. I never hear that argument. All I ever hear is shrill screaming about equal rights, legal recognition, health benefits, etc.

Can someone explain WHY gay people want to get married?

EvilOne:

Love, Commitment, Procreation.

Okay, so why would anyone marry without those three things (keep in mind, I'm in a heterosexual marriage myself)? I'm sure you're not implying that people of the same sex can't love each other...even in *THAT* way. I'm equally sure that you're not trying to imply that two people of the same sex can't be committed to one another.

This means the only reason to prevent people from "gay" marriage is because they can't procreate with a sperm and an egg, one parent owning one of each? Well, no offense, but that's just silly.

By that logic infertile couples should get divorced. And what of Gay couples who plan on adopting? Or Lesbian couples who get a withdrawel from the sperm bank? Isn't that procreation after a fashion?

But more to the point, why would you care?

If the guy's best friend is a woman, nobody can stop them from getting married.

Maybe we need two types of marriage--social and legal. Socially, you can have a big party and wear matching outfits and change your names and act like Ozzie and Harriet or Ozzie and Sharon or Sharon and Harriet.
Legally, you can draw up contracts and leave your stuff and the dog to anyone you want. YOu can have a designated spouse for taxes, work-related events, and monetary issues.

Me? I pick to socially marry Simon Doonan , but I want Warren Buffett as my legal spouse.

Ah, faux Kate, I agree with you, but you can't have a contract without both parties agreeing. What do you have to bring to the table for Warren Buffet? You don't even have your own screen-name, but have to kidnap mine.

Kate (the one who made the first post and the 27th post, NOT the 29th post)

Doesn't this column shoot the anti-gay marriage side in the foot, as there are not (in many if not all states. Nevada, at least) legal obstacles keeping him from marrying his friend? If an interested party (employee providing health insurance or INS for example) wants to prove that it is a sham, the onus is on them (or at least it looks that way on TV), but there is no prior requirement other than compatible genitalia.

On the other hand, my live-in girlfriend and I take advantage of my employer's domestic partner policy to provide health insurance to her. A utility bill to show cohabitation and a notarized signature is all that is required. Unfortunately, I have to pay taxes on the "deemed income" because we are not legally married (strangely enough, if we were same-gendered it would be exempt from CA state tax, but not for opposite gender). So that works out well for me :)

Actually, dsquared, I have to disagree. Competition in the animal kingdom does not have a 'cooperative' function--particularly when it comes to reproduction.

Just because the sex act is promiscuous in nature does not demand that procreation be left to an equalized form. Each individual seeks to reproduce itself--not the species, hence a male whose sperm are deft at dispatching the sperm of others would, in a promiscuous society, have the most offspring.

In a species that experiences actual pair-bonding, this adaptation would not be needed as the pairs are sexually exclusive.

Like it or not, the factual presence of sperm designed to impede the progress of other sperm states very clearly that humans share the sexual promiscuity of our nearest simian relative, the bonobo.

Artificial pair-bonding(marriage) is a societal norm and not a physical one in humans.

I wrote: "Are you familiar with Ronald Dworkin and his theory of giving the Constitution a moral reading?"

Clayton wrote: "Are you familiar with the fact that Ronald Dworkin was among neither the drafters nor the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment?"

Quite familiar. Sorry for the belatedness of this reply but I just read it. I do not mean to suggest that Dworkin's views on the Constitution are indisputedly correct; far from it. I only mean that he has an interesting way of looking at the issue, one he argues that judges employ today all the time. And rather than a long-winded summation that no one will read anyway, I thought I'd just recommend it. (The book is called "Freedom's Law, if you are interested.)

So, if your intention is to flame, try not to make it so incredibly baseless.

Sharing anything with the Bonobo--an evolutionary backwards primate that's put itself on the fast track to exctinction even without human intervention--is not something to brag about.

That "judges employ [it] today all the time," even if true, does not make it proper, and it does not matter how many academics tart it up as the inevitable and respectable consequence of this, that, or the other Grand Theory -- except, of course, that, every once in a while, they manage to pull it off. Then again, quite often they don't: You were one vote shy on Bowers, after all.

As to Dworkin's "moral reading," it is easily demolished: It answers nothing. Reasonable persons can disagree about what is moral, and, in fact, do so vociferously. The opponents of gay marriage can claim that same legitimacy for their "moral reading," and they've got the current law and centuries of tradition behind them, as opposed to a few years of intellectual fashion.

And if your forced construction of the Fourteenth Amendment is correct, then what, do you suppose, did the supporters of the ERA look to accomplish? And why did they make a point of denying, as to their pet project, the very consequences you're telling us were already a done deal a century before?

I do apologize to the first poster, but mny actual name is Kate and it just shows up on the comments info box. There I've switched it--but what a silly thing to worry about!

If you're in favor of gay marriage how do you feel about bygamy? Is that anyone else's business?

>>Like it or not, the factual presence of sperm designed to impede the progress of other sperm states very clearly that humans share the sexual promiscuity of our nearest simian relative, the bonobo.

No it doesn't, nor could it possibly. It gives strong evidence to believe that we are descended from some ancestor whose mating habits were at least partly promiscuous.

Just out of interest, is anyone aware of any human society anywhere which does not have anything resembling the institution of marriage?

*I am not familiar with a human society that does not have anything "resembling" marriage. However, there are thousands of historical and modern societies that do not have "traditional" monogamous marriages. Bigamy was actually the standard for thousands of years (including biblical times), so I fail to see how a "slippery slope" argument suggesting that bigamy might be the result of gay marriages is valid.... bigamy is more natually historical than monogamy.

For the record, though, there have been a number of cultures through-out history and currently that allowed for something resembling gay marriages, including ancient Rome, a number of native cultures, and several modern-day European nations.

---As to why gay people want to marry. Obviously that's a hugely personal answer. However, the reason why it's such a big deal that they are not allowed to *legally* marry is that this forbids certain rights to them. Actually, in many states one cannot live one's property to whomever one chooses... blood families can appeal and often succeed in taking formerly joint propoerty from survivors. Additionally, despite medical care contracts, many times birth families can usurp the power of the partner to make medical decisions or allow visitation. For gay people with children, it is frequently the case that if the biological parent dies the other parent who raised this child will loose them to state care because gay people are not allowed to adopt in many areas. Other problems with legal rights include issues of joint ownership, difficulties in dissolving relationships (divorce) due to lack of standardized formulas for non-marriage property ownership, and so on. The legal rights are more important for many gay people than the label of marriage itself.

Can anyone here who is married imagine how they would feel if their parent-in-laws could make it so they couldn't visit their spouse in the hospital, or could take away the home they had shared for 30+ years after the spouse died, or could take away their children...?

I married my dog last fall. We are deeply in love. Thank god for Canadian law! lol...

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