Part of the point I was making is that you can and should be able to separate opposition to same-sex marriage from support for Prop 8. Moreover, throughout your responses, you've been making the point that what should be not allowed by society and what should be forbidden by law can and should be diverge. People like Eich were free to discourage people from contracting same-sex marriages before and they are free to continuing discouraging them now, regardless of what the law says.
Fair enough-- I formulated that badly. Does he need to support same-sex marriages being legally recognized, independent of any personal reservations on the subject he may have?
I can't see any cost-benefit analysis of same-sex marriage which favours its opponents. The cost to those whose relationships are denied recognition is huge and extremely concrete; the societal benefits to disallowing them are completely nebulous. It's not at all comparable to a rail line or an intervention overseas.
Unless you really want me to, I don't think it's worth making a case I don't personally believe in against same-sex marriage. I do believe that opponents are sincere in expecting dire consequences, at least some of which I think are merely wrong. (As opposed to dishonest, crazy, or malicious.)
Some of those are based on values I don't share, but that I think people can legitimately have. (E.g., religious views that inform their concept of public morality.) Some are based on concerns I sympathize with, but disagree with in specifics, like the basic Burkean conservative principle that you don't lightly make unprecedented changes to bedrock social institutions, precisely because you can't reliably envision all the consequences.
To pick one example: Marriage as an institution is in decline by various metrics, with various bad consequences that disproportionately affect the poor. (That's potentially a whole side-conversation of its own. But even if you disagree, will you stipulate that it's a widely-held belief that a person of good will might believe?)
I don't personally think that same-sex marriage is likely to have a significant effect on that.1 But if I believed that same-sex marriage would accelerate the trend, I'd count that as a strike against it. It's pretty clear that a lot of opponents do believe that-- in which case the choice would be about which minority should suffer.
1I used to think that the effect would be strongly positive, on the theory that an influx of people who'd had to fight for the right to marry would consider it especially important. I'm less convinced of that now, but still think the effect is positive-to-neutral.
(Hit the character limit again. :-) To be continued.)
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 11:25 pm (UTC)Fair enough-- I formulated that badly. Does he need to support same-sex marriages being legally recognized, independent of any personal reservations on the subject he may have?
I can't see any cost-benefit analysis of same-sex marriage which favours its opponents. The cost to those whose relationships are denied recognition is huge and extremely concrete; the societal benefits to disallowing them are completely nebulous. It's not at all comparable to a rail line or an intervention overseas.
Unless you really want me to, I don't think it's worth making a case I don't personally believe in against same-sex marriage. I do believe that opponents are sincere in expecting dire consequences, at least some of which I think are merely wrong. (As opposed to dishonest, crazy, or malicious.)
Some of those are based on values I don't share, but that I think people can legitimately have. (E.g., religious views that inform their concept of public morality.) Some are based on concerns I sympathize with, but disagree with in specifics, like the basic Burkean conservative principle that you don't lightly make unprecedented changes to bedrock social institutions, precisely because you can't reliably envision all the consequences.
To pick one example: Marriage as an institution is in decline by various metrics, with various bad consequences that disproportionately affect the poor. (That's potentially a whole side-conversation of its own. But even if you disagree, will you stipulate that it's a widely-held belief that a person of good will might believe?)
I don't personally think that same-sex marriage is likely to have a significant effect on that.1 But if I believed that same-sex marriage would accelerate the trend, I'd count that as a strike against it. It's pretty clear that a lot of opponents do believe that-- in which case the choice would be about which minority should suffer.
1I used to think that the effect would be strongly positive, on the theory that an influx of people who'd had to fight for the right to marry would consider it especially important. I'm less convinced of that now, but still think the effect is positive-to-neutral.
(Hit the character limit again. :-) To be continued.)