"The romantic, anarchist slogans and vague philosophy of May 68 had a profound impact on the intellectual atmosphere in France."
That's a great example of what is wrong with intellectual history. It leaves out an important step. There are lots of philosophies--old and new--floating around all the time, and people can adopt any of them. But they don't. Why do they adopt the ones they do? Why do they reject other ones, maybe ones that had been popular up to that time?
If these philosophies have such bad consequences, why do people hold them?
In some ways, that has to be the answer. But what sort of perceived self-interest? "I am a believer in truth, and this philosophy is true." But why believe it is true? "I know I am a sinner and this philosophy tells me why, and how to avoid it--or to be forgiven." So much more.
AIDS (originally called GRID, or Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease) was the first modern disease epidemic I can think of where political correctness derailed the media's attempt to deliver correct information. I was working for TIME in the 1980s, when DISCOVER was part of our magazine group. As I recall, DISCOVER did a comprehensive early overview of GRID, telling readers everything that was known about the disease and its spread. The article and its sidebars made it clear that GRID was not likely to be spread through heterosexual intercourse, and would probably not spread beyond the gay community. I particularly recall a very-well done, full-color medical illustration showing a cross section of the wall of a woman's reproductive areas, to demonstrate that it was nearly impossible for the virus to cross this barrier through vaginal intercourse. It was very convincing!
I remember thinking, "Whew, I don't have to worry about that." A few weeks later, that point of view and all its evidence was bulldozed by a wave of public insistence that the non-drug-using heterosexual population in just as much danger as the gay population. Now we know that this was simply not true. And the experts knew it at the time also. But TIME and the rest of the establishment assumed that the general public was so homophobic, that they would not support expensive research for a cure, if they though it only affected gay men. That early DISCOVER article and all its evidence disappeared for ever.
As someone who thinks that #1 marriage is objectively better than #2 marriage, I've always been against gay marriage. I understand that there are marriages more oriented towards #2 and there are people who can't have kids (a good friend of mine is infertile). But these marriages aren't "the point". They are a sideshow, something that is a necessary byproduct.
I've always viewed gay marriage as the status elevation of gay sexual and relationship norms, which are toxic to type 1 marriage. In my experience the closer one is to the gay community and its values the less capable one is of successful Type 1 marriages.
I'm rather ambivalent about gay marriage though I agree scotus overstepped. Despite the ambivalence, I'm rather repulsed by many of the comments against gays. I thought I was in "a tribe" of generally like-minded people. Now I feel a bit adrift.
I totally agree with this. It's very disconcerting to see how many people on "our side" of the issue are mostly driven by anger and resentment. If course, that's true on the other side too, but I've come around to the belief that more political beliefs are just a pretext for gut level emotions than I politically thought.
Like, even if #1 marriage is better than #2 marriage, #2 marriage is still a better societal good then ... #3 treating people badly. It's economically and socially beneficial for people to establish lasting, healthy relationships. That's enough for me.
TV & movies & celebration of the hyper-individualist idea of "responsible promiscuity" are larger causes of the destruction of traditional (#1) marriage between one man and one woman, for life, for their children. (Heinlein & Rand & most Libertarians support responsible promiscuity - one of my mistaken beliefs of youth)
Insofar as same-sex avoids pregnancy, and is based on consent, it is often considered "responsible", it is better than hetero promiscuity with unwanted pregnancies.
Like abortion, the US Constitution is somewhat clear about marriage, not mentioning it - thus, it should be left to the states. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA, signed by Clinton), a law against same-sex marriage made by democratically elected lawmakers, was nullified and its opposite, law supporting same-sex marriage, was made by non-lawmaking SCOTUS. (Judicial activists)
Sex outside of marriage has been a disaster for non-college educated Americans, especially Blacks. The idea of "responsible promiscuity" all too often means just promiscuity, resulting in unwanted pregnancy, and either single motherhood or abortion (or both), and very few babies up for adoption [my preferred option, but somehow remaining the far less chosen option].
Norms influence, and are influenced, by laws. The law should uphold the norm of man-woman marriage, along with gay civil unions for non-child based same-sex relations.
We need more honest discussion of how a norm that might be optimal for high IQ folk might be sub-optimal for avg and below avg IQ folk - and we need to more often choose the norm that is optimal for low IQ folk.
Because their low IQ is part of the "life is not fair" reality, for which there is no fair way to change reality, but the social norms the minimize the problems for low IQ folk should be the norms we support.
There are many legal assumptions made when one gets legally married, for dividing property and, like in the Tom Hanks' movie Philadelphia, visitation rights in the hospital. Civil unions should solve those legal issues which, in theory, the two people could do one agreement at a time. I'd even like an explicit set of marriage agreements printed and titled for normal couples.
Children are conceived by a male sperm & a female ovum. That's bio-reality, no gay couple yet violates it. Tho in the near future the tech might allow it. I believe that adopted kids, who always have some adoptive identity issues, should not be forced to also have "impossible parent" issues. No same sex couple can have a child; most male-females could produce one, tho increasingly many do not. Especially with women over 35 trying for first child.
I agree it is somewhat easier for a digital currency to filter into other countries but I'm a little skeptical it will lead to the death of other nation's currencies if the government requires all taxes and other govt transactions in the national currency.
Marriage is both. Not sure it matters much which is primary. Why is gay marriage is problematic to traditional?
If Twitter marked Dr. Martin Kulldorff’s tweet misleading, it was not censored, at least not by the primary definition of deleting it.
El matrimonio cumple otra función que hace especialmente legítimo el matrimonio gay: genera parentesco entre los cónyuges. A efectos jurídicos, los cónyuges son parientes, lo que tiene numerosos efectos: permisos para tratamientos médicos, derechos hereditarios etc
Haider: Why choose? Why not even a third, a sort of long-term template contract between two people for forming a household. None should be illegitimate.
None need be illegitimate. All should be recognized for what they are. 1 is not 2. Calling both 1 or calling 1 through 87 “a” is at the very least confusing. Confusion is a pathway for corruption. It can be exploited by the unscrupulous, or it can escape all manipulation and lead to “mere” deterioration.
This is the crux of the matter. Why do we privilege a marriage relationship over other long-term relationships that might be equally close, such as brother-sister or uncle-nephew, in terms of taxation, inheritance, or other areas? We do it because marriage is still the primary means of procreation, and we generally wish to incentivize procreation. And before you start claiming we shouldn't do this because *some* traditional marriages don't produce children, NO same-sex marriage will produce children through normal sexual intercourse.
I guess my point is about "privilege." What do we do about the different conceptions of marriage? If it means treating non-reproducing heterosexual unions as legitimate but homosexual unions as not that, I think was wrong. Maybe some people don't like calling the homosexual unions "marriage" but _I_ don't mind. And siblings or other relates or non-related people living together suffer no great harm in their arrangements not being called "marriage."
And as a matter of fact, I'm all for supporting childbearing in heterosexual unions, I just don't know what to DO about it beyond a child tax credit.
Let's take a simple point. When I married my wive I vowed to be faithful to her (monogamous) for life.
When gays get married they very rarely do this.
It's hard to see how those things are "the same."
You could expand this to include pre-marital sexual norms as well. My church group thought pre-marital sex was wrong. Gays things its just another Saturday night.
Any empirical review of sexual conduct would find that gays (I'm speaking of gay men, the only thing people care about in gay marriage) it is vastly more promiscuous than straights. This is true even when they are gay married.
Hetero cheating is nowhere near as common as gay promiscuity, especially as you climb the socioeconomic ladder. In fact the very fact that heteros call it "cheating" is a tell. Gays can't even contemplate the idea that one *should* be monogamous.
A researcher saw some survey data on frequency of intercourse. It included type of birth control used so he looked for data on condom sales. Women reported twice as much as the number of condoms sold, men three times. Do you think you have better data for your claims?
I read that people living together are more monogamous than people dating and married people more than living together. Given how recent gay marriage is, has your data been corrected for that? Socioeconomic status is different. Has your data been corrected for that? Married gays (all gays actually) are more likely younger. Corrected for that? I'd bet married with children are more monogamous and the percent with children is higher for hetero. Corrected for that?
From what I could find, between 30 and 60 percent of married cheat, maybe most data is closer to 60%. If the percent is somewhat higher for gays, why does that even matter for the topic at hand? Why does it even matter if only 30% for heteros?
"The romantic, anarchist slogans and vague philosophy of May 68 had a profound impact on the intellectual atmosphere in France."
That's a great example of what is wrong with intellectual history. It leaves out an important step. There are lots of philosophies--old and new--floating around all the time, and people can adopt any of them. But they don't. Why do they adopt the ones they do? Why do they reject other ones, maybe ones that had been popular up to that time?
If these philosophies have such bad consequences, why do people hold them?
Perceived self interest?
In some ways, that has to be the answer. But what sort of perceived self-interest? "I am a believer in truth, and this philosophy is true." But why believe it is true? "I know I am a sinner and this philosophy tells me why, and how to avoid it--or to be forgiven." So much more.
AIDS (originally called GRID, or Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease) was the first modern disease epidemic I can think of where political correctness derailed the media's attempt to deliver correct information. I was working for TIME in the 1980s, when DISCOVER was part of our magazine group. As I recall, DISCOVER did a comprehensive early overview of GRID, telling readers everything that was known about the disease and its spread. The article and its sidebars made it clear that GRID was not likely to be spread through heterosexual intercourse, and would probably not spread beyond the gay community. I particularly recall a very-well done, full-color medical illustration showing a cross section of the wall of a woman's reproductive areas, to demonstrate that it was nearly impossible for the virus to cross this barrier through vaginal intercourse. It was very convincing!
I remember thinking, "Whew, I don't have to worry about that." A few weeks later, that point of view and all its evidence was bulldozed by a wave of public insistence that the non-drug-using heterosexual population in just as much danger as the gay population. Now we know that this was simply not true. And the experts knew it at the time also. But TIME and the rest of the establishment assumed that the general public was so homophobic, that they would not support expensive research for a cure, if they though it only affected gay men. That early DISCOVER article and all its evidence disappeared for ever.
As someone who thinks that #1 marriage is objectively better than #2 marriage, I've always been against gay marriage. I understand that there are marriages more oriented towards #2 and there are people who can't have kids (a good friend of mine is infertile). But these marriages aren't "the point". They are a sideshow, something that is a necessary byproduct.
I've always viewed gay marriage as the status elevation of gay sexual and relationship norms, which are toxic to type 1 marriage. In my experience the closer one is to the gay community and its values the less capable one is of successful Type 1 marriages.
I'm rather ambivalent about gay marriage though I agree scotus overstepped. Despite the ambivalence, I'm rather repulsed by many of the comments against gays. I thought I was in "a tribe" of generally like-minded people. Now I feel a bit adrift.
I totally agree with this. It's very disconcerting to see how many people on "our side" of the issue are mostly driven by anger and resentment. If course, that's true on the other side too, but I've come around to the belief that more political beliefs are just a pretext for gut level emotions than I politically thought.
Like, even if #1 marriage is better than #2 marriage, #2 marriage is still a better societal good then ... #3 treating people badly. It's economically and socially beneficial for people to establish lasting, healthy relationships. That's enough for me.
TV & movies & celebration of the hyper-individualist idea of "responsible promiscuity" are larger causes of the destruction of traditional (#1) marriage between one man and one woman, for life, for their children. (Heinlein & Rand & most Libertarians support responsible promiscuity - one of my mistaken beliefs of youth)
Insofar as same-sex avoids pregnancy, and is based on consent, it is often considered "responsible", it is better than hetero promiscuity with unwanted pregnancies.
Like abortion, the US Constitution is somewhat clear about marriage, not mentioning it - thus, it should be left to the states. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA, signed by Clinton), a law against same-sex marriage made by democratically elected lawmakers, was nullified and its opposite, law supporting same-sex marriage, was made by non-lawmaking SCOTUS. (Judicial activists)
Sex outside of marriage has been a disaster for non-college educated Americans, especially Blacks. The idea of "responsible promiscuity" all too often means just promiscuity, resulting in unwanted pregnancy, and either single motherhood or abortion (or both), and very few babies up for adoption [my preferred option, but somehow remaining the far less chosen option].
Norms influence, and are influenced, by laws. The law should uphold the norm of man-woman marriage, along with gay civil unions for non-child based same-sex relations.
We need more honest discussion of how a norm that might be optimal for high IQ folk might be sub-optimal for avg and below avg IQ folk - and we need to more often choose the norm that is optimal for low IQ folk.
Because their low IQ is part of the "life is not fair" reality, for which there is no fair way to change reality, but the social norms the minimize the problems for low IQ folk should be the norms we support.
Why do you assume gay civil unions are non-child based?
What is your objective for civil unions instead of marriage?
There are many legal assumptions made when one gets legally married, for dividing property and, like in the Tom Hanks' movie Philadelphia, visitation rights in the hospital. Civil unions should solve those legal issues which, in theory, the two people could do one agreement at a time. I'd even like an explicit set of marriage agreements printed and titled for normal couples.
Children are conceived by a male sperm & a female ovum. That's bio-reality, no gay couple yet violates it. Tho in the near future the tech might allow it. I believe that adopted kids, who always have some adoptive identity issues, should not be forced to also have "impossible parent" issues. No same sex couple can have a child; most male-females could produce one, tho increasingly many do not. Especially with women over 35 trying for first child.
Thx but I see see how that addresses my questions. It is at best tangential.
I agree it is somewhat easier for a digital currency to filter into other countries but I'm a little skeptical it will lead to the death of other nation's currencies if the government requires all taxes and other govt transactions in the national currency.
Marriage is both. Not sure it matters much which is primary. Why is gay marriage is problematic to traditional?
If Twitter marked Dr. Martin Kulldorff’s tweet misleading, it was not censored, at least not by the primary definition of deleting it.
El matrimonio cumple otra función que hace especialmente legítimo el matrimonio gay: genera parentesco entre los cónyuges. A efectos jurídicos, los cónyuges son parientes, lo que tiene numerosos efectos: permisos para tratamientos médicos, derechos hereditarios etc
Haider: Why choose? Why not even a third, a sort of long-term template contract between two people for forming a household. None should be illegitimate.
None need be illegitimate. All should be recognized for what they are. 1 is not 2. Calling both 1 or calling 1 through 87 “a” is at the very least confusing. Confusion is a pathway for corruption. It can be exploited by the unscrupulous, or it can escape all manipulation and lead to “mere” deterioration.
This is the crux of the matter. Why do we privilege a marriage relationship over other long-term relationships that might be equally close, such as brother-sister or uncle-nephew, in terms of taxation, inheritance, or other areas? We do it because marriage is still the primary means of procreation, and we generally wish to incentivize procreation. And before you start claiming we shouldn't do this because *some* traditional marriages don't produce children, NO same-sex marriage will produce children through normal sexual intercourse.
I guess my point is about "privilege." What do we do about the different conceptions of marriage? If it means treating non-reproducing heterosexual unions as legitimate but homosexual unions as not that, I think was wrong. Maybe some people don't like calling the homosexual unions "marriage" but _I_ don't mind. And siblings or other relates or non-related people living together suffer no great harm in their arrangements not being called "marriage."
And as a matter of fact, I'm all for supporting childbearing in heterosexual unions, I just don't know what to DO about it beyond a child tax credit.
Why does it matter if the children are produced "through normal sexual intercourse"?
Todd, What corruption do you think results from having both traditional and sentimental marriage?
Let's take a simple point. When I married my wive I vowed to be faithful to her (monogamous) for life.
When gays get married they very rarely do this.
It's hard to see how those things are "the same."
You could expand this to include pre-marital sexual norms as well. My church group thought pre-marital sex was wrong. Gays things its just another Saturday night.
What is your evidence hetero and homo vows are different?
Given how common hetero cheating is, what is your evidence gays are worse?
Heteros don't think it's another Saturday night? How is your church group representative of anything?
Any empirical review of sexual conduct would find that gays (I'm speaking of gay men, the only thing people care about in gay marriage) it is vastly more promiscuous than straights. This is true even when they are gay married.
Hetero cheating is nowhere near as common as gay promiscuity, especially as you climb the socioeconomic ladder. In fact the very fact that heteros call it "cheating" is a tell. Gays can't even contemplate the idea that one *should* be monogamous.
I'd suggest your bias is showing.
A researcher saw some survey data on frequency of intercourse. It included type of birth control used so he looked for data on condom sales. Women reported twice as much as the number of condoms sold, men three times. Do you think you have better data for your claims?
I read that people living together are more monogamous than people dating and married people more than living together. Given how recent gay marriage is, has your data been corrected for that? Socioeconomic status is different. Has your data been corrected for that? Married gays (all gays actually) are more likely younger. Corrected for that? I'd bet married with children are more monogamous and the percent with children is higher for hetero. Corrected for that?
From what I could find, between 30 and 60 percent of married cheat, maybe most data is closer to 60%. If the percent is somewhat higher for gays, why does that even matter for the topic at hand? Why does it even matter if only 30% for heteros?