First of all, the percentage of those who you would call “religious conservatives” is a lot higher than the percentage of gays. So I don’t know how you can not see this as a major problem for you if you in fact increase their resentment of you, and no, I’m not just talking about your making SSM legal, but the added things you will advocate doing to get rid of the belief that it is wrong, which you will feel will continue to oppress you and make you feel unequal.

What is more, no, we are not talking just about the many religious conservatives in this country, but also their families, friends, and neighbors who may not agree with them but respect them as family, friends, and neighbors. Many of these people will see the flagrant contempt directed toward them and react with similar contempt toward you. I know, you can make a similar argument for the friends, families, and neighbors of gays. But, again, the number of religious conservatives is bigger, and so, likely, is their circle of influence.

but without more of a hint as to what would count as success or failure you’ll have to excuse me if I regard that as more of a stalling tactic than a test.

Failure would be anything observed of obvious severe cultural damage which did not occur, or occurred to a measurably lesser extent, in “control” areas (no SSM and far from the influence of the test area), and for which other causes could not account. (i.e. those other causes were present in “controls” but did not produce the damage).

On the contrary, I know that serious homophobia is getting to be almost exclusively a religious conservative thing.

That’s almost laughable, Mark. I suppose you are going to argue that the most severe instances of anti-gay violence are perpetrated by “religious conservatives”. They are usually committed by heterosexual males whose real “religion” is their own sense of machismo. You’ll still have that to deal with, and that won’t be as easy to eradicate because a need to assert one’s sexual identity, and the ways in which the mechanisms to fulfill this need can become distorted, are matters largely unrelated to religion. (This leads to another point, which is my feeling that the question of whether or not same-sex marriage can work culturally is closely related to the question of whether or not a totally gender-free society, that is one in which no gender roles, expectations, or stereotypes develop, can ever really occur. But that is an issue for a later post).

Why exactly is my dignity not increased if the authority and power of the state is behind the proposition that religious conservatives are to be prevented from taking out their hate on me in practical ways, like withholding service in public accommodations?

Ultimately, same reason, Mark. Because it involves something more than just religion. Ask Matthew Shapard, Teena Brandon, or Scott Amedure, just to name a few. All, I take it, killed by others acting in the name of religion. Puh-lease!

I suggest that if demands for testing are as paranoid and unfocused as conservative demands commonly are (especially the maximally generic conservative argument I criticized), it doesn’t make disasters less likely.

It doesn’t if the test did not measure the disastrous effect that actually occurred as a result, though frequently that may be noted regardless. In any case, if you think this is a refutation of the “maximally generic conservative argument” then either you do not understand the argument or your reasoning is totally faulty; it amounts to a retort of “so what if it does”.

Note that it’s only gender relationships that I’m saying have probably always been pretty unegalitarian until quite recently.

With a lot of variation from culture to culture, but even limiting it to gender relationships, this suffers from the same logical problem, the failure to really answer how and why a power state develops from an egalitarian state, and vice versa.We’re as much a product now of our natures, though influenced by our surroundings, as we were then. Those who assert a magical change from darkness to enlightenment, or from power abuse to egalitarianism, vastly overestimate a small number of factors and vastly underestimate or ignore the others.

Regarding global warming, yes, some predicted some aspects of it, but are you saying that if they hadn’t, it would have been less likely to have occurred? Or that even if we had known about the greenhouse effect, it was alright to risk the ozone layer because the damage to that had not been predicted? Or is what you are really saying, that “hey, we do what we do in the name of progress, and we’ll deal with the consequences later.” Okay, I get you.

But again you evade answering the question. Society could express a preference by applying a carrot to opposite-sex relationships and remaining neutral to same-sex relationships. Opposite-sex relationships would be “rewarded”, and same-sex relationships would be “acceptable”, just not favoured.

Or society could remain neutral to opposite-sex relationships and take a stick to same-sex relationships. Opposite-sex relationships would be merely “expected” and same-sex relationships would be “unacceptable”.

Or society could do a bit of both.

I’ve been trying to find out which of these you think it is but you won’t tell me. I take it as obvious that, historically, as far as opposite-sex vs same-sex is concerned, marriage is _entirely_ about stick. It’s no meaningful reward to straight people, who would be forming opposite-sex couples regardless. And it’s no meaningful reward at all to gay people, who are quite uninterested in forming opposite-sex couples. Yet most of the time you talk as if it were a precious carrot not to be wasted on same-sex relationships. I’m trying to figure out whether you’re so lost in your world of empty slogans that you actually believe such idiocy, or whether it’s a stalking horse for a secret desire to bring back the stick.

Marital status is a preferential status. This is due to the societal preference for the core meaning of the social institution of marriage.

If you were paying attention to what I actually have said, rather than to the gaycentric voice inside your noggin, you’d have know that by now.

I’ve always suspected that your views were driven by active disapproval of gay sex and gay relationships

I’m driven by favoring marriage and understanding the societal significance of the unity of fatherhood and motherhood.

The gay stuff is irrelevant to marriage.

It is, however, the gay stuff that is central to the identity politics of the pro-SSM campaign and its argumentation. Both the campaign and its arugmentation are profoundly anti-marriage and have proven to be highly corruptive of governance and culture.

(as opposed to just less enthusiastic approval)

Your thought process is absurd.

I’ve been prodding you to see whether it would surface. Here we seem to have a flash of it, but it’s hard to say because you refer me to an answer you’ve never given.

See my first sentence in this comment.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Note that the only problem that I was counting on it to solve is providing a legal framework for a committed relationship, addressing all the issues that commonly come with such a relationship, including tax, inheritance, domestic violence, separation etc.

RK: “As was the mechanism by which all the chemicals we put in the air resulted in global warming.”

Err, no. You may be confusing it with the ozone layer. _That_ was a surprise – in fact the CFCs that caused the problem were chosen precisely because it was expected they would have little effect on ozone compared to alternatives available at the time. On the other hand, the mechanism of global warming (the greenhouse effect) was discovered in 1824, well before it became a problem. There were many uncertainties because of other effects that might have increased or decreased the problem (e.g, absorption of extra CO2 by the oceans, sulphites associated with CO2 from coal etc, etc) but the basic idea that we could easily get to the point of wrecking the climate with exponentially increasing burning of fossil fuels has been obvious for ages.

RK: “Gay people would then become the objects of hatred and resentment by many precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many other people.”

I can’t help noticing the strategic vagueness here. Let’s spell out what would actually happen: gay people would become objects of hatred and resentment among many _religious conservatives_ precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many _religious conservatives_. Well, duh. Many religious conservatives have a persecution complex – failure to agree with them or to cooperate in beating up on the people they want to beat up on is considered oppression. Why should I pander to this? It’s not as if by attempting appeasement I can buy peace – religious conservatives hate gay people already. Why exactly is my dignity not increased if the authority and power of the state is behind the proposition that religious conservatives are to be prevented from taking out their hate on me in practical ways, like withholding service in public accommodations?

RK: “I don’t find that very convincing, but I at least find that better than saying that we should just go ahead with a radical change without a test even when we could test it, merely because the test would take too long and you can’t wait. ”

“The” test would take too long? What test? You haven’t proposed a test. You’ve proposed letting things play out on a limited scope in the Netherlands and seeing what happens, but without more of a hint as to what would count as success or failure you’ll have to excuse me if I regard that as more of a stalling tactic than a test.

RK: “I’m talking about the “oh, that’s so gay” talk (in reference to so many things in life) that you hear out of so many hetero kids who often, when asked about same-sex marriage, say they are all for it.”

Do they? I know lots of kids say “oh, that’s so gay”, and I know lots of kids are supportive of SSM, but I don’t know that they’re the same kids. On the contrary, I know that serious homophobia is getting to be almost exclusively a religious conservative thing. I expect that _some_ kids who are supportive of gay people in the abstract still use a demeaning idiom rather thoughtlessly, but hey, that’s rather better for my dignity than the situation a generation ago. The news is not that that sort of stereotyping is still around, the news is that it’s a lot less vicious than it used to be.

RK: “It may indeed be hard to test chemicals, perhaps impossible, but that doesn’t make the effect any less disastrous when they are so.”

I don’t suggest that anything makes disasters less disastrous. I suggest that if demands for testing are as paranoid and unfocused as conservative demands commonly are (especially the maximally generic conservative argument I criticized), it doesn’t make disasters less likely.

RK: “I’m glad to hear that, since explaining the change from an egalitarian state to a power/authoritarian state is a lot like explaining culturally how dark suddenly turns to light.”

Note that it’s only gender relationships that I’m saying have probably always been pretty unegalitarian until quite recently. As I think I’ve also said, I think that the agricultural revolution led to a much more authoritarian state in other respects, because farmers are tied to a plot of land and thus sitting ducks for a king to come along with some soldiers and tax them.

RK: “Not saying you do, and your statement about wanting to “authoritatively slap down” beliefs you don’t like seems to indicate that you just want the source of power and authority to change from them to you.”

Yes and no. Obviously “it’s good to be the king”, to quote Mel Brooks. But I’m actually all for fairness, I just don’t think that fairness consists in religious conservatives getting to commit vigilante action against gay people and to act all persecuted if their obsession are not enshrined in law, with no comparable right of retaliation for me.

With the high divorce rate we’ve got, and having seen so many long-term heterosexual couples who have been living together for years split up shortly after getting married ( a factor of social changes which have affected marriage, not marriage itself), I do not find the “fix” so “obviously likely to succeed”, even for gays. I would not be at all surprised if after SSM becomes ingrained, and opposition marginalized, many gays will likewise decide that it was not all it was cracked up to be.

whereas the suggested mechanism of the claimed knock-on problems is, to be charitable, very indirect.

As was the mechanism by which all the chemicals we put in the air resulted in global warming.

The trouble is however, that you are the lipstick on the pig. What primarily convinces most of the anti-SSM movement is the superstitious idea that gay sex is an abomination before God, and that if you can’t have gay people locked up and if you can’t stop them getting anti-discrimination protection and if you can’t stop them getting domestic partnerships then maybe you can draw the line at civil unions and still send some sort of message about how evil they are. Even if you think that on balance same- and opposite-sex relationships should be kept separate, I hope that you would agree that the dignity of gay people would be significantly increased if that attitude were authoritatively slapped down, and that whatever else it might do, allowing SSM would have that effect.

No, Mark, I don’t agree that the dignity of gay people would be significantly increased if “that attitude were authoritatively slapped down”. Gay people would then become the objects of hatred and resentment by many precisely because they would be seen as trying to “authoritatively slap down” the sincere religious beliefs of many other people. Nor do I agree that SSM will have the effect you foresee of significantly increasing the dignity of gay people. In fact, I already see something in young people which I suspect may be an early indication to the contrary. I’m talking about the “oh, that’s so gay” talk (in reference to so many things in life) that you hear out of so many hetero kids who often, when asked about same-sex marriage, say they are all for it. Even among liberal adults who support SSM, I often find them even more likely today to stereotype gays according to behavior or other things, or to state how they feel that it’s “obvious” that someone is gay.

You see, what I think they are trying to do is convince themselves that gays are indeed a separate world that is not going to interfere with theirs. In other words, they are trying to mentally confirm the image of same-sex marriage that its proponents know is necessary in the interim if heteros are to accept it….namely, that marriage will be “equal” de jure, but gays will have their marriages and heteros will have theirs, and they will be two separate kinds of marriages de facto. By telling themselves that it is so obvious that they are not gay, and that their best friends are not gay, and that they can easily tell who is and isn’t gay, they can easier maintain the idea that gays are in a separate world that won’t effect or in any way influence theirs, and thus that SSM won’t hurt them.

Well, the problem becomes when this stereotyping gets out of hand. Thus, a partial list of what I often hear described as “so gay” today, for males:

1. Enjoying opera
2. Enjoying classical music
3. Appreciating painting, or sculpture, or architecture
4. Knowing much of anything about the above
5. Watching Lifetime movies
6. Watching soap operas
7. Listening to or enjoying disco music
8. Complimenting a woman on her dress/clothes, rather than just on her body
9. Complimenting a woman on her new hairstyle
10. Not making uncouth remarks about a woman’s body, or drooling over one in a porn mag.
11. Appreciating nature
12. Being gentle with animals
13. Being attentive to babies
14. Appreciating literature, or knowing much about it
15. Not being into sports, or not knowing a lot about it
16. Or, if into sports, preferring baseball to football
17. Discussing your deeper feelings
18. Treating women too gently
19. Not pushing quickly for sex in a relationship
20. Discussing your disagreements in a relationship

And the list can go on and on, and a similar list can be made for females, but you get the picture. The more they try to retain the idea that gays are a different world, the more they stereotype, and the more they tell heteros “hey, to prove you’re not gay, don’t do this, don’t enjoy this…”

Does it need to be said that this helps neither heterosexuals nor homosexuals?

But besides all this, the experience with all movements for equality is that no matter how equal the law is, it is never enough to make the groups feel fully equal. It has not been the case with blacks and whites, sadly to say. (Since SSM advocates like to make analogies with Loving, is anybody going to argue that Loving, which I always supported on principle, actually made blacks and whites feel fully equal, or made interracial marriage fully accepted, even to this day?) It has not been the case with women either. What happens is that the less inequality there is, the more the little inequalities that remain become magnified into even greater issues of friction, just as Alexis de Tocqueville noted. And even if the law treats two groups completely equally, the de facto inequalities that remain then become magnified. So on that basis I just do not have your confidence that SSM will be such a big boost, in the long run, to gays’ sense of dignity.

Nor that it will end prejudice against gays. Not to mention the belief among many that homosexuality is immoral. And my question to you, Mark, is this: if SSM does not do enough to eliminate the feeling that homosexuality is immoral, if it does not do enough to end prejudice against gays, and if it does not do enough to raise gays’ sense of dignity, what further would you then intend to do to “authoritatively stamp out” the feeling that it is immoral, or not truly equal to heterosexuality? If necessary I will keep asking this question until I get an answer.

Tested for what? You have to have some vague idea or you can’t do a test. Sure, you can test whether a chemical is poisonous, but that’s only one of an infinite number of ways that one could imagine a chemical doing harm.

It may indeed be hard to test chemicals, perhaps impossible, but that doesn’t make the effect any less disastrous when they are so. In using the example of global warming, I am not arguing that “anything can be tested”. Nor am I arguing that we should not adopt a change when it can be tested. As long as it may take to test SSM, it is likely easier to test than are chemicals in relation to the ozone layer. It just would take a long time to test it. What’s more, testing SSM would require that outside of the test areas, other areas not adopt it until the results of the test were apparent, and you are not willing to accept this, which means you are not willing to test it.

You seem to be saying that we were right to put the chemicals in the air because we had no way to test for their effect on the ozone layer, or on global warming, and that we didn’t even know that might be the effect. I don’t find that very convincing, but I at least find that better than saying that we should just go ahead with a radical change without a test even when we could test it, merely because the test would take too long and you can’t wait. (People suffering from devastating diseases probably feel like this too, but the medical establishment doesn’t just put them on a new medication or treatment without first testing it).

My way of approaching things is, first do no harm. In other words, do not make things worse than they are if you can avoid it. I will usually choose leaving things as is over something which might make things better but may also make things worse. This depends on other factors as well: the radicalism of the change, just how bad the current situation really is (if I find a bomb about to explode and can’t get out or throw it out I will just have to take the chance that the wires I cut may not be the right ones), the likelihood of positive over negative results if that is truly predictable (there we may agree in principle but disagree in this particular case), whether the change has been adopted previously and succeeded, etc. But in general, that is how I would approach changes in environment, ecology, economics, culture, and other complex systems of which we do not know nearly enough how they work. If the analogy of global warming does not adequately demonstrate the dangers of making untested changes to complex systems (whether we can test or not) then I guess. Mark, that we are just going back and forth with each other. You believe we should err on the side of the change and I do not. I don’t think there’s anything more that we can say to one another to convince the other of our positions. We can continue going back or forth, or we can just call it a day, and agree to disagree, and agree not to assume that if either of us does not respond the other one has “stumped” him.

I’m saying that while that argument is as vague as that “something” might go wrong, with no credible suggestion as to what the something is or why, you might as well ignore it

See, the limits of our imagination are not the limits of reality, and that applies to opponents of a change as much as proponents, which is why things might go wrong that even they didn’t imagine.

I don’t suppose there ever was a natural egalitarian state.

I’m glad to hear that, since explaining the change from an egalitarian state to a power/authoritarian state is a lot like explaining culturally how dark suddenly turns to light. As is the reverse—explaining how we are one day just going to change from a power/authoritarian state to an egalitarian one, if you believe that that’s going to happen. Not saying you do, and your statement about wanting to “authoritatively slap down” beliefs you don’t like seems to indicate that you just want the source of power and authority to change from them to you.

Quite so, it’s just not a very symmetrical situation: the suggested mechanism of the fix is so direct and so obviously likely to succeed (marriage already solves the same problems for opposite-sex couples) that I don’t apologize for glossing over it as obvious, whereas the suggested mechanism of the claimed knock-on problems is, to be charitable, very indirect.

RK: “What’s more, sorry, but no, the pro-SSM side has not made its case as to why the lack of SSM is so harmful. They have not demonstrated that something like the Salt Lake City proposal, granting them all the benefits, but not calling their unions the exact same thing as marriage, [...]”

Which SLC proposal do you mean? You appear to be describing something that would typically be called a civil union, but the SLC scheme that David has mentioned ( http://www.gaysdefendmarriage.com/2009/01/21/salt-lake-city-solution/ ) is a particularly feeble domestic partnership. It needs to be particularly feeble to squeak past Utah’s particularly severe anti-gay marriage amendment, and David and many other conservatives like it precisely because it’s particularly feeble.

RK: “[...] is so terribly harmful to them, other than that it doesn’t make them feel “equal” and hence doesn’t grant them “dignity”. Not good enough. You can’t make two unequal things feel equal just by pretending they are. Even law can’t do that.”

If that were the source of the indignity, you’d have a point, but it’s not. Realize that to the extent we make that argument, we’re not talking to you, or about anything you have to say. You’re politely making an argument that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are different and have been treated differently and therefore, on general principles of conservatism, should not lightly be merged. And since you seem like a remarkably smart and honest conservative, I pay you the considerable compliment of taking it at face value. I think it’s as weak as dishwater and it doesn’t convince me in the slightest, but I take it at face value. The trouble is however, that you are the lipstick on the pig. What primarily convinces most of the anti-SSM movement is the superstitious idea that gay sex is an abomination before God, and that if you can’t have gay people locked up and if you can’t stop them getting anti-discrimination protection and if you can’t stop them getting domestic partnerships then maybe you can draw the line at civil unions and still send some sort of message about how evil they are. Even if you think that on balance same- and opposite-sex relationships should be kept separate, I hope that you would agree that the dignity of gay people would be significantly increased if that attitude were authoritatively slapped down, and that whatever else it might do, allowing SSM would have that effect.

RK: “If our coastal cities, and even whole nations, go underwater, and mass disruption due to the climate change occurs, sorry, Mark, but as an analogy that proves enough, and if you don’t see it than all you are doing is advocating playing dice with the future.”

But that’s all you’re doing too. That’s all there is to do. The future is inherently difficult to predict, and all you can do is play the odds as best you can with as much information as you can get. Sure, sometimes you change things and encounter unexpected bad consequences, but there are other mistakes and other potentially catastrophic mistakes. If we’re going to cherry pick, the global warming example is a rather better illustration of _both_ of the main complementary mistakes, leaving major potential gains on the table and not changing and being steamrolled by external change. After all, thousands of years ago when cavemen first realized one could burn fossil fuel, conservatives would have been shivering in a corner, worrying about the sky falling, when in fact it’s possible to burn quite a lot of fossil fuel and have a much better standard of living without perturbing the climate unduly. And then, now that we _are_ approaching a natural limit, conservatives are resorting to complete hackery to dismiss the problem and justify continuing the exponential growth status quo.

RK: “To say “it might lead to disaster, yes, but it might not” is woefully inadequate. Should we still accept putting any untested (or inadequately tested) chemical into the air on the ground that examples of past environmental damage have just been “cherry-picked”?

Tested for what? You have to have some vague idea or you can’t do a test. Sure, you can test whether a chemical is poisonous, but that’s only one of an infinite number of ways that one could imagine a chemical doing harm. Indeed, carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, is barely poisonous to animals (it’s more of an asphyxiant) and in moderation it’s good for plants. For more on why I make an issue of this, see below.

RK: “I take it you apply this to Edmund Burke and J.F. Stephen, et al, as well.”

I don’t know anything about J.F. Stephen. I’d apply it to the conservative bits of Burke, but of course Burke was hardly a consistent conservative.

RK: “The character of the current “conservative” political movement is irrelevant to the question of cause-and-effect or other matters whose truth or falsehood are separate questions from the persons making the statements. You continue to make ad hominem arguments.”

No, between interesting diversions I’m mainly criticizing a very particular argument: the maximally generic conservative argument that we shouldn’t change anything because something might go wrong. I’m saying that while that argument is as vague as that “something” might go wrong, with no credible suggestion as to what the something is or why, you might as well ignore it – it’s not doing anything to meet the conservative side of the burden of proof. It’s unfalsifiable paranoia – no possible test can assuage it, first because it doesn’t imply any tests that ought to be done, and second because any tests that are dreamt up and performed will be dismissed with the fear that something _else_ might go wrong. And I keep coming back to this form of the argument partly because you do and partly because I think that the non-religious anti-SSM arguments are that hopelessly vague and paranoid.

RK: “You’ll need to work on that a lot more. One wonders why we don’t see neutered marriage more in hunter-gatherer societies, as they are (supposedly) so much closer to our natural egalitarian state that existed before the unnatural influence of power entered and corrupted everything.”

I don’t suppose there ever was a natural egalitarian state. That was an old idea made in ignorance of how actual hunter-gatherer societies operate. As I understand it, typically the men hunt and the women gather, and that even though one might expect the women to have considerable power because the gathering provides most of the resources, the greater physical strength of the men seems to carry the day.

RK: “I’ll agree on that, but you can’t deny that if its results then turn out to be negative, the fewer places that jumped on the bandwagon in the intervening 30 years, the better.”

Sure. But like I said, I’m that unimpressed by the arguments that something might. More on your link later.

Whoa. That is not the “symmetrical” application of burden of proof that we are talking about. A symmetrical application of burden-of-proof applies to the consequences of the proposal for both sides in the future, not just to the current burdens for one and the future consequences for the other side. A symmetrical application would ask the pro-side to argue why the proposed new idea will work, and the anti-side to argue why it will not. Not merely for the pro-side to argue why the status quo is bad. By this token, all we needed to do to justify putting all those chemicals into the air was show that we were suffering badly enough from heat and humidity, that we took too long getting from place to place, and that our lives were miserable in other respects. And if those opposed to the chemicals couldn’t have demonstrated exactly what negative effects they might have, then their concerns would have been seen as laughable also.

What’s more, sorry, but no, the pro-SSM side has not made its case as to why the lack of SSM is so harmful. They have not demonstrated that something like the Salt Lake City proposal, granting them all the benefits, but not calling their unions the exact same thing as marriage, is so terribly harmful to them, other than that it doesn’t make them feel “equal” and hence doesn’t grant them “dignity”. Not good enough. You can’t make two unequal things feel equal just by pretending they are. Even law can’t do that.

MB:Well, how much local testing one does and what precautions one takes depends on what problems are anticipated and how credibly they’re anticipated, as well as the severity of the problems being addressed, and sorry to say, we’re that unimpressed by the quality of the scaremongering that we’re not hanging around waiting for the Netherlands.

Well, what problems were anticipated, and how credibly, regarding all the chemicals we put in the air? Did anyone “credibly” predict the damage to the ozone layer before we started putting them in? I’m sure many found the concerns of opponents “unimpressive” as well. But by your reasoning, we were perfectly justified putting them in anyway.

MB: Yes and no., _Thousands_ of changes were introduced into the environment, in the form of novel chemicals not found in large quantities in nature. Some of them caused non-obvious “complex system” problems, some of them were just plain old obviously noxious from the outset, and some of them didn’t cause problems. If you cherry-pick your example you can make a fine morality play but it doesn’t prove much.

If our coastal cities, and even whole nations, go underwater, and mass disruption due to the climate change occurs, sorry, Mark, but as an analogy that proves enough, and if you don’t see it than all you are doing is advocating playing dice with the future. To say “it might lead to disaster, yes, but it might not” is woefully inadequate. Should we still accept putting any untested (or inadequately tested) chemical into the air on the ground that examples of past environmental damage have just been “cherry-picked”?

MB: Sure, but that’s the point: it isn’t a random aberration that conservatives failed to object to greenhouse gases and are now fighting attempts to address them tooth and nail – conservatism is much more about power than tradition.

I take it you apply this to Edmund Burke and J.F. Stephen, et al, as well.

The character of the current “conservative” political movement is irrelevant to the question of cause-and-effect or other matters whose truth or falsehood are separate questions from the persons making the statements. You continue to make ad hominem arguments. Best way I can put it is, the truth, whatever it is, is separate from the person.

As for the tactic of reducing history to a mere power struggle (which you use throughout your post), I don’t have to remind you, but we’ve already seen, through numerous examples, that when those who define all history as such actually come to power, even in the premise of making things more “egalitarian”, what they in fact wind up doing is anything but. Power just becomes more concentrated than ever before. The “temporary” state of totalitarianism necessary to overthrow the old power structure does not just evaporate away as is promised, because those who had the power before are still (in reality or the imagination) willing to do anything to get it back, and stopping them from doing so requires applying more power.

MB: Err, I get what you’re trying to say but I can’t resist noting that between the conservatives with their heads in the sand and this you picked a spectacularly bad example to illustrate it. There’s a reason it’s called _global_ warming – it’s an intrinsically global problem and one couldn’t have discovered it by a local test because the gases freely mix throughout the whole atmosphere.

Err, that strengthens my point, Mark, not yours. That it would have been extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to test for the effect of the chemicals only shows the case for erring on the side against such massive changes, especially when they are untestable.

MB: Certainly, if a policy is so bad that it leads to the complete collapse of an isolated society, then it will not be continued – there will be no one to continue it. In fact, in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, he shows that this is not uncommon, and while ecological stress is usually the primary cause, a common contributor is an elite that is insulated from the worst effects of the problems and so resists change until it is too late.

Okay, so when ecological stress occurs, a change is necessary to adapt to it.

Problem is, what guarantees that if a change is made, it will be the right change and not the wrong one?

See the problem with this? This is why I have to agree with Stove that compared to other disciplines, sociology is indeed a “festering slum” (though I would not go so far as to say any rank amateur would make it better…things can always get worse). How an entire discipline can elevate to one of its central tenets that “societies collapse because they don’t change”, while not stressing the at least equal likelihood that they will collapse if they decide on the wrong change, can only be explained by a pervasing, ingrained progressivist bias. The flaw is so obvious that a ten-year-old should be able to spot it. If mankind’s foolishness is enough to prevent them from changing when they need to, how is it simultaneously not enough to prevent them from deciding on the wrong new idea?

Now Jared Diamond is a fine author and I enjoy reading many of his books, but he is vulnerable to the same analytical problem, the progressivist bias. For every example of a society that made a successful adaptation to new ecological (or other) pressures, or every one that failed because it refused to change, how many others were there that failed because they made a change that did not work out? It’s given short thrift, way too short. And it’s a major problem in sociology and anthropology as a whole.

MB: Well, the powerful were the men, and it’s not so much that they had a vested interest in keeping marriage male-female, it’s that they had a vested interested in keeping it patriarchal, with the power and prestige of the male much greater than that of the female, and that ends up producing contempt/hatred for gay men who blur the roles to some extent.

You’ll need to work on that a lot more. One wonders why we don’t see neutered marriage more in hunter-gatherer societies, as they are (supposedly) so much closer to our natural egalitarian state that existed before the unnatural influence of power entered and corrupted everything.

MB:Sure, let’s review it in 30 years.

I’ll agree on that, but you can’t deny that if its results then turn out to be negative, the fewer places that jumped on the bandwagon in the intervening 30 years, the better.

MB: Of course some anti-SSM arguments _might_ be better than others, and there _might_ be one around the corner that’s wonderfully convincing. But I can only call it as I see it: I’ve been participating here and on marriagedebate.com and elsewhere since 2003 and it’s my considered opinion that all the arguments I’ve encountered, which you’d think would be pretty much all of them, are uniformly junk. Sorry.

Sorry, Mark. I believe it’s your opinion, but not your “considered” opinion. The pretzel logic you go into to refute them (i.e. that the untestability, before the fact, of the consequences of introducing chemicals into the atmosphere worldwide undermines the argument against making untested changes) indicates otherwise. It’s a take-no-prisonals refusal to consider them, nothing less.

You may have seen this before, Mark, but if not:

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html

True, she’s not even saying she’s against SSM, but her points are still worthy of consideration. Whether you think so or not (and no, I’m not expecting conversion by any means) will tell me something about whether your opinion is “considered” or just stubbornness.

I certainly am. I think the pro-SSM side’s effort to explain why people are being harmed for the lack of SSM are adequate, and I think the anti-SSM side’s efforts to tell a story as to why SSM will lead to disaster are laughable.

RK: “But I have never heard any SSM proponent argue that we should wait and see what happens in these places before trying to impose it elsewhere.”

Well, how much local testing one does and what precautions one takes depends on what problems are anticipated and how credibly they’re anticipated, as well as the severity of the problems being addressed, and sorry to say, we’re that unimpressed by the quality of the scaremongering that we’re not hanging around waiting for the Netherlands.

RK: “I have argued that [...] we cannot reasonably declare the SSM experiment to be a success or not for at least 30 years.”

Sure, let’s review it in 30 years.

RK: “A change was introduced into the environment, the introduction of hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, and other chemicals into the air.”

Yes and no., _Thousands_ of changes were introduced into the environment, in the form of novel chemicals not found in large quantities in nature. Some of them caused non-obvious “complex system” problems, some of them were just plain old obviously noxious from the outset, and some of them didn’t cause problems. If you cherry-pick your example you can make a fine morality play but it doesn’t prove much.

RK: “I’ll be the first to admit that “conservatives” are not always so conservative. Or, to put it more precisely, that in this case they seem to apply their conservatism to the fear of major changes in only one complex system, the economy, while ignoring it with respect to another complex system, the environment.”

Sure, but that’s the point: it isn’t a random aberration that conservatives failed to object to greenhouse gases and are now fighting attempts to address them tooth and nail – conservatism is much more about power than tradition.

RK: “Now, if we had done the smart thing, and “experimented”, how would we have done it, knowing what we did at the time? Would we have just released the chemicals over a small area? How small? And how much time would we have decided would be necessary before we could have finally claimed “See. No harm.”?”

Err, I get what you’re trying to say but I can’t resist noting that between the conservatives with their heads in the sand and this you picked a spectacularly bad example to illustrate it. There’s a reason it’s called _global_ warming – it’s an intrinsically global problem and one couldn’t have discovered it by a local test because the gases freely mix throughout the whole atmosphere.

RK: “The problem with this common argument should be obvious. “The powerful” are mortal. But the effects of their policies are not. If the effects of their policies are in fact beneficial to the society they ruled, they are more likely to continue on after they are gone, as their successors are likely to continue them. But if their policies prove detrimental to their societies, those policies are likely to be abandoned after they are gone, or their society will not survive.”

Certainly, if a policy is so bad that it leads to the complete collapse of an isolated society, then it will not be continued – there will be no one to continue it. In fact, in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, he shows that this is not uncommon, and while ecological stress is usually the primary cause, a common contributor is an elite that is insulated from the worst effects of the problems and so resists change until it is too late.

But short of that your argument doesn’t prove very much at all. A non-isolated society can’t be so weak that it falls to military conquest, but it will muddle along with the peasants in considerable squalor indefinitely if the changes that would improve the average well-being are not to the advantage of the elites. And the military conquest exception doesn’t change the situation all that much because (i) the neighbouring societies are hobbled by the same dynamic, and (ii) to the extent there is competition it’s in ability to raise armies not in improving welfare.

In fact archeologists have long known that at the time of the agricultural revolution, populations went up, because food could be obtained from much less land, but (ii) the average health and longevity went down and did not recover until quite recently. And that’s mostly because farmers, who are tied to a plot of land, are easier to tax than hunter gatherers, so it created the new economic niche of king/warlord to run protection rackets on the farmers.

RK: “What’s more, it is simply not clear why the “powerful” have a vested personal self-interest in keeping marriage male-female.”

Well, the powerful were the men, and it’s not so much that they had a vested interest in keeping marriage male-female, it’s that they had a vested interested in keeping it patriarchal, with the power and prestige of the male much greater than that of the female, and that ends up producing contempt/hatred for gay men who blur the roles to some extent.

RK: “Many powerful people in history are widely acknowledged to have been homosexual themselves (or, at least, to have frequently engaged in homosexuality).”

Indeed, and when you look at the details, it confirms the suggested psychology above. Judeo-Christio-Islamic religion imposes a blanket ban on gay sex, which doesn’t tell you much, but a very common pattern outside such societies, or on their margins, is for it to be fine, even celebrated, or at least winked at, for an adult male to be a “top”, but somewhere between gauche and utterly shameful to be a “bottom”. Thus the bottoms have to be either youths or slaves/servants/lower class.

RK: “By allowing that some anti-SSM arguments might be better than others, you would be opening up to the possibility that some that you haven’t heard might be better yet, and thus that there might even be one that’s convincing.”

Of course some anti-SSM arguments _might_ be better than others, and there _might_ be one around the corner that’s wonderfully convincing. But I can only call it as I see it: I’ve been participating here and on marriagedebate.com and elsewhere since 2003 and it’s my considered opinion that all the arguments I’ve encountered, which you’d think would be pretty much all of them, are uniformly junk. Sorry.

Mark, 10. February 2009, 13:10:
Indeed something might well go wrong, but unless conservatives are challenged to tell a plausible story about exactly what will go wrong and why, and actually rise to the challenge, you might as well ignore them and just try out the innovation to see if something goes wrong.

And, earlier, 9. February 2009, 16:53:
That’s not to say that I think the burden should be on the proponents – rather I think it should be symmetrical.

Now, both of these sound perfectly reasonable, Mark. On analysis, there are corollary questions with the first, and some general problems with the second, which I’ll get to shortly. But are you going to seriously tell me that SSM proponents, including yourself, are really taking either of these positions in the debate as it is being currently conducted?

I have seen no indication in the pro-SSM movement that their strategy is to “test” SSM in some places to see if something goes wrong. Now, yes, sometimes they argue that so far, nothing’s gone wrong in the Netherlands, or Massachusetts. But I have never heard any SSM proponent argue that we should wait and see what happens in these places before trying to impose it elsewhere. That is how you conduct an experiment, you test it in a limited area before you determine whether or not it works, and, if it works, you then apply it elsewhere. This is how you determine whether a new drug is effective, for instance.

Now, a corollary question is, just how long should it take before an experiment is declared a success? I have argued on other blogs, since the debate over this issue has begun, that this is not something that can be determined overnight by any means. I have argued that because the actual change comes not just from the change in the law itself, but from the change in public perception in the meaning of the institution, and because this change in perception does not fully occur at least until a generation has grown up with only the new perception, that we cannot reasonably declare the SSM experiment to be a success or not for at least 30 years.

You may argue with this, of course. You may maintain that my time frame for declaring it a success is too long. And I’m sure others may argue that it is not long enough. But the fact is that really, I have not heard SSM proponents, at least in the public arguments on the issue, even raise the issue of just how long it should be before we know if the experiment is successful. They have not even called for dialogue in determining how long it should be. True, neither have most opponents. But, if you say you believe that we should “experiment” with SSM to see if anything goes wrong, and if you are sincere in adopting that approach, then that is the next step, as the experiment has already started.

Now I would still argue that we should err on the side of caution and accept a higher figure for the number of years before declaring it safe. But what I detect from the pro-SSM movement is only a desire to declare it a success as soon as possible and start trying to legalize it wherever they feel it is politically possible. No discussion of how long it would take for us to know. Just start the bandwagon rolling as soon as possible, whether we know or not. That is the way the issue is being presented, in California and elsewhere. So if it turns out not to be a success, it will fail in far more areas than just the Netherlands before we even know. Clearly, the SSM advocates are not asking to “experiment” and see if anything goes wrong.

Nor are they taking the position that the burden of proof should be “symmetrical” between proponents and opponents. On the contrary, in California, and throughout the nation, the notion is being pressed that simply because this is to be declared a “fundamental right”, therefore the proponents should have everything automatically assumed in their favor, and that there is no argument otherwise. No talk of symmetry or burden of proof exists in this assumption. Am I wrong in this analysis of the campaign?

There is, of course, a problem with the argument that when discussing a change to a highly complex system, that we should place only the same burden of proof on the opponents of the change as we do on the proponents. This problem is best demonstrated by analogy with another highly complex system, the environment.

A change was introduced into the environment, the introduction of hydrocarbons, fluorocarbons, and other chemicals into the air.

Now, before you jump in with cries of “outrage” and contend “How dare you compare the fundamental right to marry with the introduction of a pollutant into the air”, remember that we did not think of these chemicals as “pollutants” at all when we started introducing them into the air. We thought we were doing mankind a great service. We were making transportation easier, enabling people to reach far away places sooner than they ever had before. We were developing new materials in our factories that would greatly increase our quality of life and make life a lot easier. We were going to provide us all with relief from the misery of scorching heat and humidity. We were doing it to make the world better. Or so we thought.

Now, I suppose, Mark, that here you may also try to get into a diversion about how it’s conservatives that are the ones insisting that none of these things have hurt the environment, or that global warming isn’t happening. This is totally irrelevant. I’ll be the first to admit that “conservatives” are not always so conservative. Or, to put it more precisely, that in this case they seem to apply their conservatism to the fear of major changes in only one complex system, the economy, while ignoring it with respect to another complex system, the environment. They may be right about the short term effects on the economy, but if the environment is irreperably damaged, in the long term the economy will suffer along with it.

Whatever the facts on global warming (and I realize that there’s still debate although the growing consensus is that it is happening), one thing can’t be denied: We had no idea it was happening until many decades after we started putting the chemicals into the air. Obviously, we didn’t treat the introduction of the chemicals as an “experiment”, did we?

Now, if we had done the smart thing, and “experimented”, how would we have done it, knowing what we did at the time? Would we have just released the chemicals over a small area? How small? And how much time would we have decided would be necessary before we could have finally claimed “See. No harm.”? Just from what has happened, if the worst predictions of scientists now are true, the answer would almost certainly be “not enough”. So even if we allow what we feel is a reasonable amount of time to declare an experiment a success, if we are in fact premature in declaring it so we may well pay the price still later. There is no logical reason why the same may not be true about social changes, even when they are assumed to be good ones.

Mark in the thread above: After all, the only thing you can actually tell from the existence of an institution in the past is that it served the interests of the _powerful_

The problem with this common argument should be obvious. “The powerful” are mortal. But the effects of their policies are not. If the effects of their policies are in fact beneficial to the society they ruled, they are more likely to continue on after they are gone, as their successors are likely to continue them. But if their policies prove detrimental to their societies, those policies are likely to be abandoned after they are gone, or their society will not survive.

What’s more, it is simply not clear why the “powerful” have a vested personal self-interest in keeping marriage male-female. Many powerful people in history are widely acknowledged to have been homosexual themselves (or, at least, to have frequently engaged in homosexuality). To kind of turn the tables on a common question SSM proponents ask of opponents, explain just how allowing males to marry males threatened the power of a society’s rulers, or how it threatened their power over their wives, for that matter.

Mark: 9. February 2009, 2:48:
The unwillingness to differentiate is perfectly real, but it’s not rhetorical – it really is my considered opinion that the anti-SSM arguments I’ve encountered are uniformly junk.

By allowing that some anti-SSM arguments might be better than others, you would be opening up to the possibility that some that you haven’t heard might be better yet, and thus that there might even be one that’s convincing. Because you refuse to even consider that possibility, you thus feel forced into a take-no-prisoners position where you just declare them all equally “junk”. It’s not a very mature way of approaching argument.

I think you are a very intelligent person, Mark, and I really admire your determination and tenacity here. And while, as I have said, your personal feelings do not stop you from making an excellent argument for your position, I feel they do blind you from objectively considering the merits of those on the other side, and though this is true of many this is not true of all other advocates of SSM that I have encountered.

No, in all the years we’ve been sparring, I’m quite sure you’ve never said a word about what was more or less “acceptable”. I’d remember, because I’ve always suspected that your views were driven by active disapproval of gay sex and gay relationships (as opposed to just less enthusiastic approval) and I’ve been prodding you to see whether it would surface. Here we seem to have a flash of it, but it’s hard to say because you refer me to an answer you’ve never given.

CO: “But what makes it a kind of sexual relationship for the purposes of being preferred is that it provides for the contingency for responsible procreation. [...] Your namecalling is tiresome, Mark, and unworthy of public discourse on the issue of marriage. Look in the mirror.”

I stand by what I said. As far as I can tell this sort of verbal mush (“provides for”, “contingency”) is the extent of your understanding of how the traditional system worked.