March 10, 2004

Thomas Sowell On Gay Marriage I laughed my ass off when I read this. I have read Sowell's columns for a longtime. Man, the guy has written some nutty things in the past about the civil rights era.

Here's his argument against same sex marriages.

Marriage is a social contract because the issues involved go beyond the particular individuals. Unions of a man and a woman produce the future generations on whom the fate of the whole society depends. Society has something to say about that. Even at the individual level, men and women have different circumstances, if only from the fact that women have babies and men do not. These and other asymmetries in the positions of women and men justify long-term legal arrangements to enable society to keep this asymmetrical relationship viable � for society's sake. Neither of these considerations applies to unions where the people are of the same sex.
No babies, no marriage.
posted by Sullivan 20 years ago
  • >>asymmetries in the positions of women and men what the heck?? that sounds naughty to me.
  • Asymmetries are the third-most-common sexual problem for couples (and even worse for threesomes).
  • it is interesting to me that the gay marriage issue as provoked by recent events has been all about the santity of marriage for the sake of producing children. since when? I am married, to someone of the opposite gender, & we do not plan, desire or intend to have children. there are many other reasons two people choose such a course, many of which apply to non-hetero unions. harump!
  • what the heck?? that sounds naughty to me. That's just your dirty mind thinking that, SideDish. Look at the picture of Sowell. Is that the face of someone who has ever had a sexual thought in his life?
  • So by this writer's standards, we should probably also ban women from working so they can stay home and have babies, I suppose.
  • +Sullivan
  • Sullivan, I hope you don't mind but I'm going to put some of your post behind a [more inside] tag. It's a little long for the front page.
  • Sullivan, I hope you don't mind but I'm going to put some of your post behind a [more inside] tag. It's a little long for the front page. Not at all.
  • Make no mistake, childless married couples are only one notch down the ladder of evil from gays in the worl of people like mr. sowell.
  • By his lights then, men and women who cannot have children (sterile, had a hysterectomy etc...) are also forbidden to get married? If we follow his logic, won't every person who wants a marriage licence have to take a fertility test? Sullivan: I dunno, he looks like a dirty old man to me. Those leering eyes....
  • Sullivan, you and I are often on opposite sides of the ideological fence, but I have to admit that the "no babies-no marriage" argument is a bowl-floater. My question, though: why does the homosexual community parse the distinction so finely between civil union and marriage? My thought is (and I could be wrong, is why I ask) that the real issues are the inability of homosexuals to create the sorts of legal relationships that traditional heterosexual marriages enjoy - taxation, sharing of benefits, estate issues, joint finances, etc. If civil unions would permit this and be translatable accross state lines, why then the semantic fight for the term "marriage", with its religious connotations and apparently hot-button quality? I understand the separate but equal argument, but I'm not sure it applies here, provided that the legal standing of civil unions was the same as that of heterosexual marriages - we're not talking about the back of the bus here, after all. And I realize that in a campaign year, this particular issue has taken on a disproportionate mass, but if the ultiamte goal is legal equality, would a pragmatic approach toward acquiring a nationwide civil union be preferable to provoking an ultimately bound-to-fail but in the meantime polarizing constitutional question over the connotations of a single word?
  • There are two main reasons I have thought of, Fes. The first is essentially worries about future "separate but equal" - with different terms, marriage and civil unions could grow apart in legal status. Unless the definition of civil union were very explicitly tied to marriage. The second is that those gays and lesbians who wish to marry really to wish to marry. They don't want to simply shack up or be common-law (which they could already do in Canada). They want to be full-out, society recognising, husband and husbanding/wifing and wifing, married. See the arguments presented by one of the first gay husbands in Ontario on why he wanted to be married - they are both religious and social reasons.
  • (of course there have been gay husbands - but I mean gay man with a husband - confusing way to put it, sorry.)
  • My question, though: why does the homosexual community parse the distinction so finely between civil union and marriage? My thought is (and I could be wrong, is why I ask) that the real issues are the inability of homosexuals to create the sorts of legal relationships that traditional heterosexual marriages enjoy - taxation, sharing of benefits, estate issues, joint finances, etc. If civil unions would permit this and be translatable accross state lines, why then the semantic fight for the term "marriage", with its religious connotations and apparently hot-button quality? Fes: jb more or less covered it. I will add that some states may not give civil unions the same rights as marriage. I can't see Jeb Bush in Florida doing so.