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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Dead Horses: U.S. Supreme Court Decision
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
What I actually wrote concerning miscegenation laws is that they cannot be justified on a traditional view of marriage, whereas an opposition to "gay marriage" can be.
Depends on your tradition, doesn't it? One of the things argued by the attorneys representing the commonwealth of Virginia was that anti-miscegenation laws had a long history in the United States, and in their colonial precursors as well. "[A] traditional view of marriage" was exactly what Virginia's attorneys were arguing to justify their position.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
It's the US Supreme Court interpreting Federal Law based on the US Constitution, Why is a particularly American question inappropriate?
It's not inappropriate. My point was rather that mixed race marriages haven't normally been deemed to be invalid or immoral in history, although they may have been discouraged or banned for various reasons reasons.
In other cases, of course, such marriages have been encouraged as a way of sealing alliances. In the USA I understand that marriages between white people and native Americans Indians were sometimes sanctioned as a way of maintaining harmony. This suggests that Americans didn't inevitably see mixed marriages as inherently 'other', different in kind from marriages within racial/ethnic groups.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
<my previous post lacked references, but was in response to Crœsos>
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
Besides, using this reasoning one could look at prior split decisions and determine that the Supreme court could have affirmed slavery (as they did for a while) segregation (ditto), the inability of a woman to own property in her own right, the unfitness of marriage between races, etc. etc. etc. One could even determine that Gore should have been President.
I'm sort of waiting for a point here? My point was that the minority opinions indicate the possible range of legal opinion for me, even if I am not myself informed about the minutiae of contemporary law (in a foreign country). And that I then pick from this range according my own moral (rather than legal) judgement, to arrive at what I think the SCOTUS should have done. How is that affected by listing instances where you consider it clear that the minority opinion got it wrong?
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
You seem to equate "general 'moral' grounds" and "bounds of valid legal reasoning".
Precisely not, and the very point of dealing with them separately was to show that my judgement is not based on confusing them!
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
The other thing, of course, is that SCOTUS did not usurp the legislative power. They simply said it is not constitutional to ban the civil state of marriage for gay couples.
I probably should read what they wrote, and if you people keep dragging me into this I probably will... Anyway, the question here is how precise the court was in its judgement. If the court said that a particular definition of marriage, or perhaps a particulate type of definition of marriage (still sufficiently characterised) is unconstitutional to withhold from gay couples, for this or that clear reason - then that's fine. Because this would give the law maker scope to decide whether they want to keep that sort of definition, and allow "gay marriage", or change that definition sufficiently to avoid the flagged problems, in order to reject "gay marriage" also in future. But if the court simply declared all rejection of "gay marriage" unconstitutional, then arguably they have hamstrung the law maker in this matter and furthermore certainly exceeded what those law makers had in mind who actually wrote the constitution. That would be a de facto usurpation of legislative power. It's a fine line, admittedly, but I think there is a line there somewhere.
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
When I get married on my 14th anniversary in September, I will be married in the eyes of the State of Georgia, the Federal Government of the United States, my family, and my husband. I won't be "same-sex married" to these entities, I will simply be "married". If you and your wife were to move to the US, the same (and no more) would be true for you in the eyes of these entities. I won't be married in the eyes of the RCC and you will, but they have little to no moral credence with me so I really don't care.
I doubt it. While I do not generally endorse "The Orthosphere", because I genuinely think that they have lost it, this article by Kristor summarises relatively sanely why this will not change much of anything. Well, it will change some key legislation concerning insurances and the like, I guess - and I can genuinely say that I do not begrudge you that at all. I think what has been exposed as difficulties for gay people to get treated decently by insurance companies etc. should have led to widespread legislative reforms. Just not on marriage...
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
In fact, where I think most anti-gay Christians "get it wrong" is in thinking that gay people will be coming after them to force them to perform gay marriages in their churches, etc. The pressure they feel will be coming from their own internal lay members (and a few clerics), many of whom are NOT gay. There will be little or no pressure from outsiders, who don't really care what they do.
I hope you are right. It is not a reasonable hope though.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
If the court said that a particular definition of marriage, or perhaps a particulate type of definition of marriage (still sufficiently characterised) is unconstitutional to withhold from gay couples, for this or that clear reason - then that's fine. Because this would give the law maker scope to decide whether they want to keep that sort of definition, and allow "gay marriage", or change that definition sufficiently to avoid the flagged problems, in order to reject "gay marriage" also in future. But if the court simply declared all rejection of "gay marriage" unconstitutional, then arguably they have hamstrung the law maker in this matter and furthermore certainly exceeded what those law makers had in mind who actually wrote the constitution. That would be a de facto usurpation of legislative power.
Again, we're back at criticisms that could be just as validly leveled at Loving, which "simply declared all rejection of "[inter-racial] marriage" unconstitutional, then arguably they have hamstrung the law maker in this matter". Take, for example, Chief Justice Warren's footnote 11:
quote:
Appellants point out that the State's concern in these statutes, as expressed in the words of the 1924 Act's title, "An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity," extends only to the integrity of the white race. While Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite (subject to the exception for the descendants of Pocahontas), Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference. Appellants contend that this distinction renders Virginia's miscegenation statutes arbitrary and unreasonable even assuming the constitutional validity of an official purpose to preserve "racial integrity." We need not reach this contention, because we find the racial classifications in these statutes repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment, even assuming an even-handed state purpose to protect the "integrity" of all races.
That pretty clearly "hamstrung the law maker" as far as any future attempts to impose racial strictures on marriage.
Limiting lawmakers to acting within the limits of the Constitution may "hamstring" them, but it does so by design and intent, not through some kind of judicial over-reach.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
While I do not generally endorse "The Orthosphere", because I genuinely think that they have lost it, this article by Kristor summarises relatively sanely why this will not change much of anything.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) That's hilarious. I always thought you had no sense of humor, but apparently I was wrong. Here's a favorite bit.
quote:
Heterosexuals – especially heterosexual men – can forebear to express their disgust at homosexual sex, but they cannot stop feeling it.
I wonder who Kristor thinks is the main customer (demographically speaking) for the lesbian porn market?
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
In fact, where I think most anti-gay Christians "get it wrong" is in thinking that gay people will be coming after them to force them to perform gay marriages in their churches, etc. The pressure they feel will be coming from their own internal lay members (and a few clerics), many of whom are NOT gay. There will be little or no pressure from outsiders, who don't really care what they do.
I hope you are right. It is not a reasonable hope though.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. How many second marriages of divorcées has the Catholic Church been compelled to perform in the U.S.? Despite a couple having the legal right to wed, no denomination can be forced to perform any ceremony it doesn't want to.
[ 29. June 2015, 20:17: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
It's the US Supreme Court interpreting Federal Law based on the US Constitution, Why is a particularly American question inappropriate?
It's not inappropriate. My point was rather that mixed race marriages haven't normally been deemed to be invalid or immoral in history, although they may have been discouraged or banned for various reasons reasons.
But laws restricting marriage on racial grounds were also deemed valid and moral for most of U.S. history. They weren't universal, but they were seen as a validly-existing option within the U.S. Constitutional framework, at least until Loving.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
f your traditions include racism, sure they can, just as your tradition including homophobia allows you to justify your views.
I certainly do not believe that homosexual practice is morally licit according to my tradition, and if you want to call that "homophobia", then be my guest. But it would be more correct to say that I reject homosexual activity in general and "gay marriage" in particular, based on the same underlying ideas about human sexuality - rather than rejecting one because of the other directly.
quote:
Originally posted by Siegfried:
The trick is, of course, depending at what point in history to drive in a stake and declare "This is where Traditional Marriage begins". And as has been pointed out, no where in Genesis is marriage defined. You're taking "man + woman = babies" and "be fruitful and multiply" and back-defining that to be marriage by shoehorning those items in.
Naw. As mentioned in the parallel Hell thread, I do not feel quite that Protestant need to read my religious convictions back into the bible. My tradition is quite literally my tradition, and as far as marriage being between man and woman goes, that goes beyond the usual apostolic roots of my faith, and even beyond its Jewish predecessors. There simply has been no time so far where this tradition has not been utterly dominant in human history, or best we can tell even in prehistory. Even among the ancient Greeks and Romans, who were rather famously permissive about homosexuality, there simply was no serious dissension on marriage being properly between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. Up until modernity, people pretty much could not afford to think differently, as having offspring was often the key to survival and social advancement.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Limiting lawmakers to acting within the limits of the Constitution may "hamstring" them, but it does so by design and intent, not through some kind of judicial over-reach.
Constitutions are drawn up by lawmakers, and ultimately are theirs to change if needed. Judges very definitely can over-reach their remit, if they interpret the constitution over and against the lawmakers of the present day and do so without a clear indication that the lawmakers who made that constitution originally intended to have it put to work in that way. "Expansive" interpretations of a constitution necessarily run that risk, and the constitution is not a tool for beating the elected lawmakers into a shape the judges wish they had. Whether either "Loving" or the current case are in fact cases of such over-reach would require a sophisticated discussion I neither have the knowledge nor interest for. That means I over-reached in insinuating that SCOTUS did over-reach. But frankly, that was more me stirring the pot than anything else, as perhaps should be clear given that it was a sarcastic one liner we are talking about here...
Do you see no limit for what SCOTUS can reasonably sell as an interpretation of the constitution? Is all fair game to them, as long as the best legal minds can somehow argue their imposed decision to be in tune with the constitution? Is the political scope of SCOTUS set by their ability to justify their decisions in a reasonable sounding manner? Given that these people are some kind of lawyers, I think that this is a rather naive, and potentially dangerous, take on things...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I wonder who Kristor thinks is the main customer (demographically speaking) for the lesbian porn market?
Obviously that comment has nothing to do with the actual message of that blog post, nor is it particularly hard to see that the author was thinking of the typical reaction of heterosexual men to sex between men. In short, to single this out for ridicule just goes to show that most of the article was not as laughable as you would have liked it to be.
That said, it is rather curious that men tend to react differently to Lesbians, or at least to Lesbian porn. (I doubt that most men appreciate Lesbians as much as Lesbian porn...) One theory is that Lesbian porn, or at least Lesbian porn produced for men, tends to depict two (or more) women getting ready for sex with the observer, or at a minimum, demonstrating their wantonness to him. Basically, it is a form of erotic dancing that conveniently takes care of the need for any foreplay, rather than something that is genuinely portrayed as serious competition to the sexual desires of the usually male observer.
Or to put it at the level of thinking with your dick: "horny woman = good, horny women = better."
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Do you see no limit for what SCOTUS can reasonably sell as an interpretation of the constitution? Is all fair game to them, as long as the best legal minds can somehow argue their imposed decision to be in tune with the constitution? Is the political scope of SCOTUS set by their ability to justify their decisions in a reasonable sounding manner? Given that these people are some kind of lawyers, I think that this is a rather naive, and potentially dangerous, take on things...
If you have a system of government which limits the actions of the legislature (as the U.S. does) then someone has to be able to correct the situation when the legislature* oversteps those bounds. In the U.S. that's the Supreme Court. The main limits of the Court are that it can't act on its own (someone with standing has to file suit and show both damage and potential remedy) and the court's limited ability to enforce its rulings. Expecting legislatures to voluntarily stay within "parchment barriers", as Madison put it, is even more "naive and potentially dangerous" than allowing a court to review and counter their actions.
Of course, the legislature does have the option to override the court by amending the Constitution. A couple of U.S. presidential candidates on the Republican side have already suggested this. The classic example is the Dred Scott decision, which was so reviled after the U.S. Civil War that the U.S. Constitution was amended not once but twice to expunge its influence.
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*BTW, legislatures are also disproportionately composed of "some kind of lawyers" who are often able to "justify their decisions in a reasonable sounding manner".
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
What I actually wrote concerning miscegenation laws is that they cannot be justified on a traditional view of marriage, whereas an opposition to "gay marriage" can be.
Depends on your tradition, doesn't it? One of the things argued by the attorneys representing the commonwealth of Virginia was that anti-miscegenation laws had a long history in the United States, and in their colonial precursors as well. "[A] traditional view of marriage" was exactly what Virginia's attorneys were arguing to justify their position.
Absolutely. I only just recently found out that there was an argument that God had clearly not wanted the different races to marry, because he had put them on separate continents to avoid them meeting. And that modern life had wrecked this arrangement with its new-fangled forms of transport like ships that could cross oceans with slaves in them.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I only just recently found out that there was an argument that God had clearly not wanted the different races to marry, because he had put them on separate continents to avoid them meeting. And that modern life had wrecked this arrangement with its new-fangled forms of transport like ships that could cross oceans with slaves in them.
And there's no need to get all scientific about it. There is plenty in the Pentateuch about the evils of intermarrying.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I only just recently found out that there was an argument that God had clearly not wanted the different races to marry, because he had put them on separate continents to avoid them meeting. And that modern life had wrecked this arrangement with its new-fangled forms of transport like ships that could cross oceans with slaves in them.
And there's no need to get all scientific about it. There is plenty in the Pentateuch about the evils of intermarrying.
Doesn't the Pentateuch say it's okay if the foreigners convert? I'm just thinking that off the top of my head.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Doesn't the Pentateuch say it's okay if the foreigners convert? I'm just thinking that off the top of my head.
I'm not sure. There is definitely a good bit of intermarriage once the Israelites slaughter down -- sorry, SETTLE down -- in Canaan, but I'm not sure it's ever really approved of.
But my knowledge here is very incomplete. LAMB CHOPPED WHERE ARE YOU!?
[ 30. June 2015, 04:57: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Didn't Ruth inter-marry with Boaz? And since they became ancestors of David, wasn't that a Good Thing?
[ 30. June 2015, 06:20: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Didn't Ruth inter-marry with Boaz? And since they became ancestors of David, wasn't that a Good Thing?
Definitely. But my question is whether the books say "intermarriage is a good thing" -- not whether they present a story that has that unspoken message when viewed in retrospect.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
Even if it was possible to prove definitively that the Pentateuch taught racial intermarrying was an offence against Jehova, I would still think that was bollocks.
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Doesn't the Pentateuch say it's okay if the foreigners convert? I'm just thinking that off the top of my head.
Depends on the foreigners. For example, No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. On the other hand, the third generation of children born to [Edomites or Egyptians] may enter the assembly of the Lord, and presumably this means being able to marry Israelites without penalty.
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Didn't Ruth inter-marry with Boaz? And since they became ancestors of David, wasn't that a Good Thing?
Good question, especially since no one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. Since Ruth was a Moabite, she'd be in the "forbidden no matter how long your family has lived among us" category rather than the "okay after three generations" category. Of course, it's possible that these rules only applied to Moabite men and not women. English doesn't have the gendered cases found in a lot of other languages so it's possible I'm missing some nuances by reading in translation. Any Hebrew scholars in the house?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Crœsos,
Women aren't full people, so the rules aren't going to be the same.
mr cheesy,
mr cheesy,
Hardly know where to begin. Proper religious study is about deciding which particular bollocks one will accept and which one will not. One would think it would involve context, but that marks one as amateur.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Even if it was possible to prove definitively that the Pentateuch taught racial intermarrying was an offence against Jehova, I would still think that was bollocks.
To be fair, though, 10 of the 12 tribes ended up disappearing as a distinctive racial and religious group, so if God had invited intermarriage the Jews would probably not exist as such today. Whether that would matter depends on your point of view. Plenty of other ethnic and religious groups from the ancient world no longer exist.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
In fact, where I think most anti-gay Christians "get it wrong" is in thinking that gay people will be coming after them to force them to perform gay marriages in their churches, etc. The pressure they feel will be coming from their own internal lay members (and a few clerics), many of whom are NOT gay. There will be little or no pressure from outsiders, who don't really care what they do.
I hope you are right. It is not a reasonable hope though.
Of course it's a reasonable hope, at least in the US. Try producing a single priest who has ever been forced to perform the marriage of a divorced person against his will and the teachings of the church. For that matter, find a Protestant minister in the South who has ever been forced by a court or legislature to perform the marriage of a mixed-race couple. You can't do it.
There are STILL churches in the South that will not perform such marriages. Most of them are small and rural, and from time to time one of them will hit the news. Sometimes they change their policies--but the minister is more likely to change from pressures within the governing board of the congregation or social pressure from peers in a small town. Police and courts do not get involved.
(On a total tangent, I had the opportunity to view the aftermath of one such minister in what was left of an independent Presbyterian church whose ex-Minister had been very involved with League of the South when we were called in to look at the organ. The church is now closed. While the Minister had been removed through a court case, it was the members of the church who brought the case against him.)
In an Established Church, I would expect things to be different--but we are discussing the US.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Considering at least one country banned its state church from conducting same-sex marriage while legalising it everywhere else, it puts IngoB's POV as more hysteria than reality.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
It's early days. Major swings in the accepted morality tend to have practical consequences eventually.
The heroic story of the rise of homosexuality to normality in the West is of course nothing but the overthrowing of the written and unwritten sexual laws left over from Christendom.
So you actually know what it looks like when a strongly dominant morality has shaped society and its laws. It's what you have struggled against so hard and long.
"Oh, but we will be so much better than Christendom and its remnants. Tolerant in mind, lenient in practice." Well, I'm not holding my breath on that. History is like fugue, endlessly repeating the same phrases but in ever new voices and arrangements.
The tolerance of gay supporters in my experience disappears like the dew in the sun at any sign of serious opposition. Of course, modern means of social control are a tad more sophisticated than burning people at the stake. Perhaps, say, the state decides that only such charities are worthy of tax exemption that sufficiently embrace the sexual egalitarianism it wishes to promote. No smoke to tingle one's nostrils there, but highly effective nonetheless...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
Oh I have no doubt there will be a lot of pressure on churches. I'm just pointing out that most of it will be internal--coming from those who are part of the institution. One of the denominations in the US which consistently polls at the top of support for gay marriage is...(drum roll)...the Catholic Church. Well, not the hierarchy, obviously, but they do not constitute the Church in its entirety any more than a thousand laymen who approve of same-sex marriage do. Some of the hierarchy will undoubtedly feel betrayed--I doubt Cardinal Burke feels Mother Church has been treating him as he deserves lately.
My husband and I couldn't give two hoots what the Catholic Church does, but all those people in its pews do.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It's early days. Major swings in the accepted morality tend to have practical consequences eventually.
The heroic story of the rise of homosexuality to normality in the West is of course nothing but the overthrowing of the written and unwritten sexual laws left over from Christendom.
So you actually know what it looks like when a strongly dominant morality has shaped society and its laws. It's what you have struggled against so hard and long.
Too late! "[T]he overthrowing of the written and unwritten sexual laws left over from Christendom" (at least in the West) started about a century ago when women gained legal equality with men. Abolishing coverture, making marital rape a crime, letting women vote and even hold office; that's what overthrowing the "strongly dominant morality [that] has shaped society" looks like. Not to denigrate the gains made recently for the legal rights of homosexuals, but just by numbers alone women's legal equality is a much bigger blow against the accepted morality of Christendom, as you call it.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Net Spinster
Shipmate
# 16058
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Good question, especially since no one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. Since Ruth was a Moabite, she'd be in the "forbidden no matter how long your family has lived among us" category rather than the "okay after three generations" category. Of course, it's possible that these rules only applied to Moabite men and not women. English doesn't have the gendered cases found in a lot of other languages so it's possible I'm missing some nuances by reading in translation. Any Hebrew scholars in the house?
Not a Hebrew scholar but I've certainly read that that is the Rabbinic understanding; the prohibition applied to Moabite men not women. It has been speculated that Ruth which is a late book was written as a pushback against the Ezra/Nehemiah attempts to require endogamy (Ezra has Jewish men divorce their non-Jewish wives and abandon the children by them [Ezra 10]).
Matthew's genealogy btw has both Ruth the Moabite and Rahab the Canaanite.
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spinner of webs
Posts: 1093 | From: San Francisco Bay area | Registered: Dec 2010
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Doesn't the Pentateuch say it's okay if the foreigners convert? I'm just thinking that off the top of my head.
I'm not sure. There is definitely a good bit of intermarriage once the Israelites slaughter down -- sorry, SETTLE down -- in Canaan, but I'm not sure it's ever really approved of.
But my knowledge here is very incomplete. LAMB CHOPPED WHERE ARE YOU!?
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif) You rang?
There is a lot of intermarriage, starting really with Jacob's own children, who presumably married Canaanites etc. as we hear nothing of them going back to the Old Country like Dad did. In fact, we know Judah married the daughter of Shua, a Canaanite, which makes Shua an ancestor of Jesus. Joseph likewise married an Egyptian girl, Asenath, and most likely the rest went the same road.
We are told that a "mixed rabble" came up with the Israelites out of Egypt, and were apparently the starting point of at least one rebellion. I think this refers to people of other ethnicities who grabbed the chance to leave Egypt at the same time Israel did in the general upheaval. They would have been absorbed by intermarriage, I'm sure. Oh, and of course Moses had a Midianite wife, and Judah's leader Nahson married his son off to Rahab the Canaanite. David's commander Uriah was a Hittite married to an Israelite woman, and in good odor with everybody. And etc, and etc, and etc.
It's never clearly stated anywhere in exactly those words, but it appears that the boundary between being "one of them" (Moabites, Canaanites, whatever) and "one of us" (Israel) had to do with faith. A Canaanite/Hivite/Amorite/Girgashite/Jebusite/Klingon (sorry, couldn't resist) who wholeheartedly worshipped the Lord and the Lord only was basically absorbed at once, and there don't seem to have been any bars to intermarriage or other privileges. (Note: for guys this would mean circumcision)
The problem comes in with the small ethnic communities or families that "kept themselves to themselves" while living in Israel--the sojourners, the migrants, and especially those who worshipped other gods or who attempted to worship the Lord and other gods at the same time. Those people did NOT get native status quickly, if at all (or so it seems to me). Nehemiah went so far as to order divorce of such women, though he had an emergency situation going on with the children taking their mother's language/culture and having no Israelite identity (most likely including the faith). If Nehemiah had been faced with a Canaanite woman who had wholeheartedly converted and instructed her children in the faith, then what? It's obviously a guess, but I think he would have accepted her as part of Israel.
Why? Because the one and only reason for forbidding intermarriage, which is harped upon again and again ad nauseum by the prophets, is that those who intermarried usually lost their faith and went after other gods.
No other reason.
So. What about those passages about Edomites etc. to the third, or tenth, generations? I think (and yes, this is only my opinion) those refer to families and communities that chose to remain separate within Israel, rather as the Amish or some Jews do in America today. An Egyptian family that chose not to intermarry but to keep their pure Egyptian ethnic identity could nevertheless be admitted to full "Jewish" worship rights and privileges ("the assembly of the Lord") in the third generation, in spite of the fact that they remained Gentiles. And why the third generation? Well, by the time Moses is laying down this law for the final time, he was basically looking at the third generation to come out of Egypt--the grandchildren of the "rabble"--and it was these people who would enter the land and be counted as Israel regardless of their actual race or ethnicity. So even if Granddad insisted on marrying Dad off to a fellow Egyptian's daughter, and then you came along with no Israelite blood at all--still, you would be able to worship with the rest of Israel, you would gain an inheritance in the land, you would have all the rights and responsibilities of a Jew. Which you have to admit is a pretty sensible way of starting a new nation. Have as little division at the start as you can.
But the Moabites etc? Well, these were folks who came from nations that had done some nasty stuff to Israel along the way as they wandered, if I remember correctly, and this was the payback. But if I'm correct in my readings, even they could become part of Israel at the cost of faith in Israel's Lord (shown by circumcision in the case of the guys) and intermarriage would naturally follow. What wasn't open to them was claiming the privileges of an Israelite while continuing to maintain a foreign identity of any kind. (In theory, the Egyptians could have gone on importing Egyptian brides and grooms for their children ad infinitum, and still have qualified for all Jewish privileges despite being completely Gentile in ancestry. But not the Moabites.)
Of course, I may be wrong on all this. But it's the only way I can make sense of the constant OT link between intermarriage and apostasy (=don't do it! in the strongest terms), taken together with the fact that converts (like Ruth and Rahab) seem to be absorbed instantly and even married off to princes and leaders.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Thank you! I knew you'd have an opinion. Can you spare an additional thought concerning Net Spinster's hunch, immediately above your post, that the rules applied to the men but not the women?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Net Spinster is no doubt right, because this is a patriarchal culture, and ethnicity is therefore inherited from the father. Daughters are "guest children" in such cultures, and may marry out or in. It doesn't make sense to apply ethnically-based rules to daughters in such a culture. (Just as it wouldn't make sense to apply them to sons in a matriarchal culture like the Cherokee once were--and yes, they had inter-clan marriage regulations! Clan membership (=ethnicity) was inherited there from the mother)
[ 01. July 2015, 03:58: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I'd like to drag us back to the main issue here.
It seems to me that there are two vary obvious and conflicting systems of truth here:
a) Divine knowledge
b) Societal norms
IngoB says that he knows what God thinks about marriage. Which is fine by me, he can believe that only one-legged men called Charlie can marry if he wishes.
The problem is not, as far as I can see, that religious groups claim divine insights, but that they think they can impose those insights onto others, even to the extent of suggesting they have an argument that proves a Supreme Court judgement invalid.
Or to look at it the other way around, the Supreme Court (imperfectly, it is obviously true) is there to give equal justice to everyone. On the basis of fairness, it has decided that two people of the same gender should have the same state recognition as two people of different genders. Claims to divine revelation cannot lay any particular weight to this argument because on their own they are not addressing the issue of fairness. Also many people have many claims to divine revelation, what is so special about this one?
As Ingo has illustrated above, the RCC has a view of marriage that others do not accept. Clearly applying that view brings one into conflict with the Supreme Court judgement.
In Ingo's straight-line way of thinking, there is no difference between justice, natural law, the laws of physics and divine revelation. Which is fine, although balmy in my opinion.
In the real world, in my opinion, there is clearly a conflict between claims to divine insight and corporate community understanding of justice. Until that is recognised, this conversation isn't going anywhere.
[ 01. July 2015, 07:58: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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luvanddaisies
the'fun'in'fundie'™
# 5761
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
My tradition is quite literally my tradition, and as far as marriage being between man and woman goes, that goes beyond the usual apostolic roots of my faith, and even beyond its Jewish predecessors. There simply has been no time so far where this tradition has not been utterly dominant in human history, or best we can tell even in prehistory.
You say that as though it's reasonable, but write this paragraph about racial segregation or racism in one form or another and it's also true.
Is that really something you can base a rational opinion on? Yes, in most of the world racism is now taboo, but for the vast majority of human history the dominant tradition has been for people to oppress others and to be oppressed because of their race.
If it's not okay for people to continue to discriminate by ethnicity despite tradition and history setting a precedent, why is it okay to discriminate by sexuality (or, for that matter, by gender conformity/non-conformity, in the case of non-cis-gendered people)? I don't get it. Where do you put the line that demarcates one category of people as worthy of throwing over centuries of tradition al discrimination for, but not another category of people? Why is one group worth more or more human than another? What is it that makes the struggle for equal marriage in the sense of what gender the participants are different from the struggle for equal marriage in the sense of what ethnicity they are?
I don't understand.
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)
Posts: 3711 | From: all at sea. | Registered: Apr 2004
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luvanddaisies
the'fun'in'fundie'™
# 5761
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Posted
Apologies, on reflection, that last post of mine is probably more suited to this titanic thread than to this one.
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)
Posts: 3711 | From: all at sea. | Registered: Apr 2004
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Net Spinster is no doubt right, because this is a patriarchal culture, and ethnicity is therefore inherited from the father. Daughters are "guest children" in such cultures, and may marry out or in. It doesn't make sense to apply ethnically-based rules to daughters in such a culture. (Just as it wouldn't make sense to apply them to sons in a matriarchal culture like the Cherokee once were--and yes, they had inter-clan marriage regulations! Clan membership (=ethnicity) was inherited there from the mother)
Is this so? I thought that, in Jewish terms, ethnicity passed from the mother, thus, the offspring of a Jewish man and a gentile woman would be gentile, but that of a gentile man and a Jewish woman would be Jewish. I think that the basic point you are making is correct, though. Whilst things probably ossified over time, in pre-exilic Israel, worship of the One was of much greater importance than ethnicity.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
If it's not okay for people to continue to discriminate by ethnicity despite tradition and history setting a precedent, why is it okay to discriminate by sexuality (or, for that matter, by gender conformity/non-conformity, in the case of non-cis-gendered people)? I don't get it.
Sex has a clear purpose: creating offspring. "Marriage" has always been the social institution containing this purpose, which is utterly essentially to the survival of every human society ever. Race - if you mean by that the sum of various adaptations of skin colour, hair structure, etc. - has a much less clear purpose, is not associated with a near universal social institution and is largely inessential to the survival of every society. (You could at most argue that places that get lots of sunlight are better settled by humans with darker skin, or some such...)
This is hence simply comparing apples with oranges. There is no discrimination involved in saying that gay people cannot marry, that is simply stating a matter of fact about their unsuitable combination of genitalia. The first move in proposing "gay marriage" is hence invariably to claim that the underlying purpose of the social institution "marriage" is not procreation. Admittedly, our societies have been going down that path anyway, and not just to accommodate homosexuals. But these laws codify this false conception into the fabric of our societies. The measure of marriage is what society protects by law, and "traditional" marriages will now become a special case among the religious nutters that one can perhaps tolerate.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
Sex has multiple clear purposes, one of which is mutual pleasure for the purpose forming strong, lasting relationships. This is useful for raising children, but historically these would not necessarily have been the offspring of the couple concerned, and such strong relationships have value to wider society even if childless.
tl;dr: you're begging the question.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
That line of argument seems to stretch very thin though - sex has a procreational purpose, marriage has the purpose of creating a social framework for sex, therefore marriage ...
It can be challenged, and is challenged, at each point, so where does that leave it? As some kind of eternal set of truths?
As soon as it is rooted in social conditions, it loses its necessity, doesn't it?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Sex has multiple clear purposes, one of which is mutual pleasure for the purpose forming strong, lasting relationships. This is useful for raising children, but historically these would not necessarily have been the offspring of the couple concerned, and such strong relationships have value to wider society even if childless.
This is not just "useful" for procreation, but ordered to it. We enjoy sex just as we enjoy food: the pleasure is nature's way of making us ensure offspring and nutrition, respectively. And we seek strong, lasting relationships because human pregnancies last long, human babies are helpless and raising them to self-maintenance takes a minimum of 7-8 years (by which time usually a couple more, younger children will be around). Humans need to be tied into "child raising teams" for decades, or their offspring will perish. That we do other things with all these natural arrangements does not change their functional origins.
[ 01. July 2015, 13:00: Message edited by: IngoB ]
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It can be challenged, and is challenged, at each point, so where does that leave it? As some kind of eternal set of truths?
Our natural appetite for food is not really "challenged" by either gourmet cooking or McDonalds, neither by the variety of regional dishes nor by the cultural customs we attach to eating. However, if you eat, then induce vomiting, so that you can eat again or avoid gaining weight - then you are challenging substantially what eating food is good for. And hence such behaviour is indeed immoral, if one believes that "what things are good for" is essential to morality.
It sure isn't always clear where one should see similar challenges in sexuality. People are complicated and do strange things. But that gay marriage really does challenge the natural purpose of sexuality, and its social rendering, is indeed clear. One would be hard pressed to find a more obvious paradigm breaker... By the same conception of morality one can hence surely conclude that it is immoral.
You may not believe in that kind of morality. You may be able to pick various minor holes in its reasoning. Fine. But you cannot really deny that the basic logic here is sound, and that given the premises the conclusion does indeed follow. I would be much more impressed by an alternative account, say using utilitarian morals.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
That we do other things with all these natural arrangements does not change their functional origins.
Wait. Isn't it your whole argument that doing other things with all these natural arrangements is immoral? A chair is for sitting on so standing on it to reach something on a high shelf is immoral. Sex is for procreation, so deriving pleasure from it is immoral. Marriage is about raising children, so a married couple co-authoring a book is immoral.
The other obvious question is why children being raised by homosexual couples not need a "child raising team"?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
Natural appetites are in the eye of the beholder. It seems some of the Greek philosophers (was it Socrates, I forget) thought that having sex with young boys at the baths was a natural part of life.
It is also hard to argue biblically that there is any kind of consistent view on healthy natural appetites.
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arse
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
And largely irrelevant as far as U.S. law goes, which does not stipulate fertility as a condition of marriage. In fact, as noted earlier, when the state of Indiana argued before the Circuit Court that marriage was about having children, the court noted that Indiana had a statute permitting marriage between first cousins, but only if one or both of them could convincingly demonstrate their sterility.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It can be challenged, and is challenged, at each point, so where does that leave it? As some kind of eternal set of truths?
Our natural appetite for food is not really "challenged" by either gourmet cooking or McDonalds, neither by the variety of regional dishes nor by the cultural customs we attach to eating. However, if you eat, then induce vomiting, so that you can eat again or avoid gaining weight - then you are challenging substantially what eating food is good for. And hence such behaviour is indeed immoral, if one believes that "what things are good for" is essential to morality.
It sure isn't always clear where one should see similar challenges in sexuality. People are complicated and do strange things. But that gay marriage really does challenge the natural purpose of sexuality, and its social rendering, is indeed clear. One would be hard pressed to find a more obvious paradigm breaker... By the same conception of morality one can hence surely conclude that it is immoral.
You may not believe in that kind of morality. You may be able to pick various minor holes in its reasoning. Fine. But you cannot really deny that the basic logic here is sound, and that given the premises the conclusion does indeed follow. I would be much more impressed by an alternative account, say using utilitarian morals.
I would just say that you're jumping from is to ought. A phrase such as 'the natural purpose of sexuality' seems designed to cleverly splice the two together, so that not procreating becomes immoral, since procreating is moral. I think also the term 'purpose' hides such an ambivalence, I mean saying that nature has purposes. Well, OK, you can talk in such teleological terms, of course, but then you seem to change metaphoric to literal. The purpose of nature is death, in a way.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Sex has a clear purpose: creating offspring.
That is a purpose. Not the purpose.
I continue to find your functionalist description of the human body as bewildering as always. It is supremely divorced from reality. Your penis is for both ejaculation and urination. Your mouth is for both eating and breathing. Your nose is for both breathing and smell. Your ears are for both hearing and balance. Your eyes are not only for seeing but play a crucial part in your attractiveness to potential mates. Your appendix is quite possibly for nothing much, although there's some debate about this. Your belly button's usefulness expired many years ago.
Food is for both nutrition and pleasure, and you believe this if you've ever gone to a restaurant in your entire life. But when it comes to sex, you are utterly determined to rule out pleasure as a purpose. It's absurd.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
And please don't tell me that with food, pleasure is always secondary to the nutrition.
Because you cannot tell me with a straight face that when someone brings a cake to work, and people have some of it when they're not actually hungry, you stand up and declare "eating this is immoral".
And yet that is exactly what you would have to do to be consistent with your position on sex. If pleasurable non-procreative sex is immoral, then pleasurable non-nutritional eating is immoral.
Tomorrow morning will be our fortnightly morning tea. There will be yummy stuff. Most of it will not be healthy. None of it will be remotely necessary for nutrition, as all of these people get by all the other days of the fortnight without this supplied food. People might describe themselves as feeling "guilty" about what they eat, but I'll bet you a large sum none of them are meaning that they've broken God's moral law.
[ 01. July 2015, 14:59: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Food is for both nutrition and pleasure, and you believe this if you've ever gone to a restaurant in your entire life. But when it comes to sex, you are utterly determined to rule out pleasure as a purpose. It's absurd.
More critically, he seems to rule out anything other than sex as a legitimate purpose in marriage.
This may provide some insight. Key 'graph:
quote:
For a lot of homophobes, the logic appears to be something like this: I had to give up hope for happiness by saddling myself with a marriage to someone I don’t really like much in order to fulfill my procreative duties. Who do you gays think you are, with all your talk of love and passion? You’re starting to give other straight people the idea that they should marry for love? Piss on all of you. If I can’t be happy, no one can.
I have no idea about IngoB's personal circumstances, but this seems to be the general philosophical position he advocates.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, I've always thought that - envy and revenge.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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I had to laugh, reading on, when that guy argues that gays will be divorcing in droves. Yeah, unlike straight people, who rarely divorce, and evangelicals even more rarely.
(*sarcasm smilie*)
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I remember reading research somewhere showing that marriages by gay couples are statistically more stable than those by straight couples. I'll have to look it up some day.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I remember reading research somewhere showing that marriages by gay couples are statistically more stable than those by straight couples. I'll have to look it up some day.
I know there is definitely research saying that they have less domestic friction. This is because they divide up domestic tasks on the basis of who wants to do each task/who is better at each task, without any resort to perceptions that task X is a "man's task" or a "woman's task".
The household chores have got to be done, even when the "traditional" performer of the task is nowhere to be found. So same-sex couples just get on with it.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Net Spinster is no doubt right, because this is a patriarchal culture, and ethnicity is therefore inherited from the father. Daughters are "guest children" in such cultures, and may marry out or in. It doesn't make sense to apply ethnically-based rules to daughters in such a culture. (Just as it wouldn't make sense to apply them to sons in a matriarchal culture like the Cherokee once were--and yes, they had inter-clan marriage regulations! Clan membership (=ethnicity) was inherited there from the mother)
Is this so? I thought that, in Jewish terms, ethnicity passed from the mother, thus, the offspring of a Jewish man and a gentile woman would be gentile, but that of a gentile man and a Jewish woman would be Jewish. I think that the basic point you are making is correct, though. Whilst things probably ossified over time, in pre-exilic Israel, worship of the One was of much greater importance than ethnicity.
Jewish ethnicity NOW passes through the mother, but in OT times it was not so. The change came some time after the destruction of Jerusalem, and I'm told (rightly or wrongly) it was because under horrific conditions (such as rape, death of fathers during war, etc.) it was easier to be sure of a child's mother than its father.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
Possibly not relevant, but the genealogies in the NT are both sexes (but overwhelmingly men). From memory I think Bathseba and Ruth are mentioned in one or the other.
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arse
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