A tiff about marriage

CЯЦISIИG DOШИ ТНЕ СОДST OF THE HIGH БДЯБДЯEE has a post on a back and forth he is having with a woman on marriage. I found it engaging.

Because I find it amusing, I will respond to this woman's salvo against my post on marriage, at least until I get bored.

If your partner is hospitalized in the ICU after a critical accident, you don't have family visitation rights. Why?

Because you're not family. Best friends also don't have visitation rights. Even best friends who are roommates. But when best friends who are roommates also have sex, then they should have special rights? Why there is a social imperative for homosexual couples to have a number of the privileges you listed is, so far, unjustified by you. I lived next door for a while to a couple of aging sisters that lacked a number of the privileges homosexuals are asking for and are, at least by your arguments, equally entitled to them. They loved each other. They cared about each other. They shared a house, and at their age, they weren't going anywhere--but no special joint-filing status, no special joint property rights, and so on. No one is advocating for their rights.

And as a Ron Paul supporter, I would think you would support the hospital's right to set its own visitation policy. I do. Regarding the specific issue of visitation rights, I think privately owned hospitals should be able to set whatever rules they want.

"If we legalize gay marriage, we're going to start seeing pressure to legalize multiple marriages!"

That's not the argument I made. I was simply pointing out that legal precedent for denying special privilege to certain kinds of cohabiting people in sexual relationships already exists, as opposed to making a slippery-slope argument. This is because arguments for gay marriage often turn on a "fairness" claim that is already contrary to legal precedent.

if we were to legitimize marriage between family members, it would turn into a medical snafu of the highest degree,

There are no laws banning marriage between people whose children are at a high risk for genetic defect, or banning sex between older couples whose children are at a high risk for Down's. So this is kind of a bad argument against banning incest, unless you're going to put the government in charge of deciding who is and isn't genetically fit to mate. Also, this is immaterial to arguments based on fairness. Homosexual couples, especially men, are at higher risk for medical problems. Her argument against polygamy, which I didn't reprint, was that it would make life hard for the IRS--so now rights should be granted or restricted based on how difficult it makes the tax code?

So does this mean that any sexual activity other than penis-in-vagina intercourse is considered immoral and sinful, and other rhetorical questions?

I doubt most of these were intended to be answered, but I'll just give the general paradigm here: When it comes to most of the body's functions and organs, people are generally quite competent at agreeing that they have a "normal" purpose. When it comes to sex, however, people come entirely unglued, and suddenly, my body's purpose and function is defined by my will alone. People who can agree that noses are for breathing and eyes are for seeing most strenuously and vigorously deny that reproductive organs are for reproducing. People who agree that lungs are not for smoking and lower backs are not for lifting are for some reason unable to say that rectums are not for reaming. There simply is not a consistent view of the human body here. Yes, my view of sex is procreative, and my understanding of what the family is builds on that. At least it's consistent, both philosophically and biologically.

Are they looking for the same basic rights as a committed couple so that they can share property ownership and power of attorney and health insurance and retirement? Yes. What does that have to do with the act of sex?

That is precisely my point. Why should homosexuals have special rights and privileges that best friends, roommates, caring siblings, and so on do not? Because they have sex with each other? If this has nothing to do with sex, then what? And again, why limit it to two? What if three gay men really love each other, have tons of triple-butt-sex, and live together?

A common mis-argument of the gay lobby is that marriage law is about love. While love is foundational for marriage, marriage law isn't about love; it's about the socio-economic effects of procreation. People often get married out of political, social, and economic necessity/convenience. Family law in general, which touches other aspects, such as the transferral of property and inheritance, has little at all to do with love. If people simply grew out of the ground and sex were merely for fun, we wouldn't have marriage law at all. Furthermore, it is not the government's job to judge whether or not two (or more!) people love each other. It is its job to protect its citizens--and regular sex has this tendency to create new little citizens.

Thus, the government does not create families, it recognizes them and accords them certain legal duties and privileges in order to for society to function (this is the basis of common-law marriage, btw). Families happen regardless of whether or not the state is paying attention due, yes, to sex. We need good marriage law (which we don't always have in this country) to prevent a man from creating lots of new little citizens with lots of different women (which is a major social liability), to protect women from being economically devastated by an unfaithful spouse, to ensure that the people who create the children provide for them, to make sure women are not left economically unmoored, and so on. Because of procreation, sex has huge effects on social and economic life. That's why we have marriage law. It has nothing at all to do with love.

Homosexual relationships simply do not create any such social concern. Homosexuals do not produce children, and so their relationships do not produce any kind of socio-economic gender inequality resulting in the need for special property rights and protections for their couplings (or triplings--homosexual sex is in no way limited to two). For the same reason, we do not have special laws enshrining the rights of best friends, cohabiting siblings, or other loving, caring relationships.

She asks, "What does the law have to do with sex?" I ask, "What does the law have to do with love?"