“The difference is not biological but social or psychological: the existence or non existence of love.
And since love between two people is what marriage is for (not conception, since conception can occurr outside marriage and outside love), I can’t see no obstacle for the state recognizing love between to men or between two women.”

But by this argument, why not have the state recognise marriages between relatives? Or between multiple partners? Why limit the number to two? If marriage is just the recognition of love between people, then why can’t a brother and sister be allowed to marry each other.

Clearly marriage and sexual intimacy are very deeply linked. (I think this was demonstrated in the UK when two sisters were denied a civil partnership).

“Why is better or unique to give life through normal means? To give life through artificial insemination is not unique? To help the next generation through adoption is not unique?”

I believe it is better for a child to be brought into this world by an act of love by the two people who created him. And then to be brought up by those very same people. If this is not possible then alternatives have to be found I agree, such as adoption. But in the case of these alternatives, they should as much as possible seek to emulate the ideal.

You seem to argue that if the “utilitarian” argument is not absolute it has no value. In this I disagree.

Again I repeat, the sexual relationship between a male and female is of great value as in the majority of cases it brings forth new life. As this is so, society through the state, grants recognition to this coupling, through the institution of marriage. Society, promotes, esteems and privileges marriage. The small minority of heterosexual relationships that cannot reproduce, do not detract from the notion that male-female relationships are special. (Besides, the huge invasion in privacy and cost of discovering if a couple can or cannot have children, mitigates against excluding this small minority)

Homosexual relationships are in a completely different category as this type of sexuality never ever reproduces. Hence society need not and in my view should not extend, its legal recognition and privileges to them. If it does so then it states categorically that marriage is, as you say, only the recognition of love. I don’t think it is the place of the state to create entire legal categories just to recognise the private love between people, of any gender.

I feel that on this subject Fabian, you and I will simply have to disagree.

Incidentally all the above has been an argument against homosexual marriage in secular non-Jewish society.

Clearly Fabian, the issue of Homosexual marriage within Jewish society brings up many other arguments.

Finally, I must stress, that my arguments are not made out of any hostility towards homosexual relationships. As I have said on another previous post, I think the heterosexual world could learn a great deal from the love, support, mutual kindness on display in many homosexual relationships. My arguments are simply due to my belief in the social value unique in heterosexual matrimonies.

Kol Tuv

I guess that we have dealed with the utilitarian argument. Right? Your last arguments are not utilitarian.

“As in society we recognise the uniqueness of the male/female sexual relationship, and it’s unique effects, we reserve marriage for heterosexuals.”

In this argument I don’t understand why the recognition of the uniqueness of the union of a spermatozoid and an ovule through normal coitus has to be done by reserving the institution of marriage for some. Heterosexual couples that use artificial insemination then, by this criteria, are not “unique”, and therefore would not qualify for marriage. Moreover, the recognition of uniqueness can be done by different means than forbidding marriage for homosexual couples or even it should not be done by the state at all. Why is better or unique to give life through normal means? To give life through artificial insemination is not unique? To help the next generation through adoption is not unique?

“Due to the uniqueness of heterosexual sexuality, and by extension, relationships, I believe that this would be a mistake.”

But in this extension is that your argument fails, in my opinion. Heterosexual sexuality may be unique, but only because it is biologically unique. Marriage, on the other hand, is a social institution, which is not always founded on the expectation of bring forth children to the world. Rape with conception produces the same biological uniqueness that marriage with conception does, but we don’t sanctify rape with special rights for the rapist.
The difference is not biological but social or psychological: the existence or non existence of love.
And since love between two people is what marriage is for (not conception, since conception can occurr outside marriage and outside love), I can’t see no obstacle for the state recognizing love between to men or between two women.

“Just because the majority of musicians are not genius like Mozart doesn’t mean that you have to allow the study of music only to geniuses.”

Ah but in the issue of marriage, your above illustration is a category confusion. I think the corresponding comparison would be, funding music lessons in a school for plumbers.

I understand your point, that if homosexual couples adopt, then there is a utilitarian reason for marriage.

But as I don’t simply see this from a utilitarian vantage point, but also see marriage as a legitimisation of sexual union, the above arguments do not completely satisfy.

Also there is a significant difference in the union of a man and a woman, that produces children, and a homosexual couple who adopt or have a surrogate child.

Heterosexual sexual activity, brings forth new life. The child is a product of both parents. Part of his or her identity derives from the fact that he/she is as the Torah says is”flesh of my flesh”. This is not the same with any other coupling.

As in society we recognise the uniqueness of the male/female sexual relationship, and it’s unique effects, we reserve marriage for heterosexuals.

Acceptance of homosexual marriage, is a declaration that society considers the relationships of homosexuals as equivalent in the majority of cases to the relationships of heterosexuals in the majority of cases.

Due to the uniqueness of heterosexual sexuality, and by extension, relationships, I believe that this would be a mistake.

Hi Yossi: but that is not a good argument. Just because the majority of musicians are not genius like Mozart doesn’t mean that you have to allow the study of music only to genius.

If you don’t have (like I don’t have) any objection in principle to adoption of children by homosexual couples, then there is no objection in principle to their marriage by social utility. Imagine, following your criteria, that you demanded a signed declaration by heterosexual couples who want to get married that they will have children, otherwise they could not get married (and actually the logical step would be to marry couples only after they have children – fulfill their social function). Then you could ask for a similar declaration by homosexual couples that they will adopt a child (fulfill their social utility). Get it? Whether any of these couples will comply is another subject. You could set a number of years as limit.

That was according to your criteria of social utility. I don’t share your criteria, but I hope I showed that it is not incompatible with gay marriage.

“Once reproduction has been completely divorced from sex and marriage, and looking 20 years down the road, we’ll find ourselves in a world of designer babies, tailor-made children whose genetics, at least in part, will be composed of spliced genomes.” (John P.)

You will have all that even without homosexual marriages. Your arguments are so bizarre that I question whether you are homosexual as you say, or you just use that as a cover (they way antisemites try sometimes to speak as “insider Jews”).

“In that case you should have no problem with a referendum by some Southern states on whether to reintroduce segregation.”

I would have a big problem with that, but I’d just have to suck it up.

“It seems to me that the reason countries have constitutions and bills or rights is precisely because some rights are fundamental and not subject to the whims and fancies of popular opinion.”

I agree. We are all born with those rights. But so is every serf, every child prostitute, every battered wife, and every gay man in Tehran.

We aren’t born with a guarrantee that those rights, and liberties, will be upheld and enshrined in law. The legal and social recognition of our rights is something we confer upon eachother, and regularly replenish at the ballot box.

The laws of nature do not include ever-advancing social progress. Because they reflect us, and how we really are. A constitution is a splendidly useful device, but ultimately anything crafted by human ingenuity, and moral integrity, can be laid waste by human decadence and duplicity.

“Nevada”, obviously.

Time for bed, obviously.

The Mormons are on difficult ground here: they believe in traditional marriage in practice but polygamy in principle. By contrast, it was the black churches and the Catholics who carried the day both for Obama and for traditional marriage (money is one thing, but there are not many Mormon votes in California or Florida, although I grant you that there are in Arizona). They – we – have no such problem.

Anyway, “Christianists”? Hardly! “Mormonists”, perhaps. The Mormons are a serious problem for the idea of America as a singularly Christian country. Third only to the Catholics and the Southern Baptists, they believe that the Native Americans are descended from the Ancient Israelites, that Jesus actually visited America, that the Church flourished there for centuries before Columbus, and that the Second Coming and subsequent earthly reign will taker place in and from Missouri.

(Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and others all likewise simply presuppose that that Coming and reign will be in and from the Good Old U S of A, as if it were self-evident. Doubtless, so do many millions more in other communities.)

The East Coast media’s problem with his Mormonism is that it is so Western, so much of that vast space between Chicago and California which they cannot even begin to comprehend. They can cope with the South, which they know about, even if they only know that they viscerally detest it. But the West is a different world. And Mormonism is very much of the West.

Indeed, there are so many Mormon facilities in Las Vegas that one might reasonably assume half its population to be at least nominally Mormon, and a sizeable proportion to be a great deal more active than that. Yet well over half the population of Las Vegas is employed one way or another by either or both of gambling and prostitution. As Americans themselves say, go figure. Not least, go figure not only that Romney won Arizona, but that so did Clinton, a very “understanding” wife…

The Mormons are polytheists, anthropomorphists, believers that human beings can become gods (and, indeed, that all gods were once human beings), and, I say again, not in principle opposed to polygamy. So, I say again, “Christianists”? Hardly!