Federal Marriage Amendment
So the senate will begin debate on the Federal Marriage Amendment on June 6. If passed, this amendment will be the only amendment attacking a freedom rather than protecting a freedom. Aside from the fact that it's a move of cruel senseless discrimination. I participated in the letter writing campaign and actually got a (form) reply from Mike Dewine. I formulated the below in response. Read it over. Please give suggestions. If you live in Ohio and would like to have your name and contact info included at the end, IM me or talk to me in person. Screenname: logikweaver.
Hello Senator Dewine,
Thank you for replying to my email urging you to oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment. However, I would like to investigate further the reasoning behind your support of this amendment. You wrote that you "always have believed that marriage is between a man and a woman," and that this belief prompted your support of such measures as the Federal Marriage Amendment.
The statement "marriage is between a man and a woman" is not, descriptively speaking, an accurate statement. As I'm certain you are aware, same-sex marriages are recognized in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, and Massachusetts. Accordingly, your statement must be taken in a prescriptive sense, and a less-deceitful wording of it would be "marriage should be between a man and a woman."
What prompts this belief? And more importantly, what makes it eligible for legislation? There are many beliefs that are commonly held that are not legislated. For example, while the general populace believes that it is bad to hold racist attitudes, there are no laws (or movements for laws) against holding racist attitudes—only against acting in a racist manner.
This demonstrates that legislation does not aim towards moral ends but rather towards social ends. Hate crimes are illegal due not to their inherent wrongness but rather due to their effect of undermining the social order of egalitarian opportunity we would like to create.
The institution of marriage, as it now stands, is of a solely interpersonal nature and is now sex-blind. In earlier periods of Western social development, prior to the second agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the highly profitable spread of Capitalism, resources were more scarce. In these societies marriage developed and functioned as a mechanism of distributing resources both inter-generationally and intra-generationally.
It distributed them inter-generationally through the concept of inheritance via family line, which was itself created through the concept of sexual fidelity or exclusivity. It distributed them intra-generationally through bans on incest. Avoidance of incest prompts marriage between family lines, or lines of resource/inheritance descent, thereby distributing resources throughout societies.
Wage labor is a more efficient mechanism of distributing resources throughout a society, and accordingly the customs of bride price and dowry have been abandoned. Moreover, children do not typically rely on an inheritance for their livelihood. Before wage labor, children needed to inherit the land of their parents in order to have somewhere to live and to produce food. Inheritances today are generally not productive and do not provide the primary means of subsistence.
Accordingly, marriage is now an institution that is primarily interpersonal. Same-sex marriages fit perfectly in this institution without altering it in any way. It is impossible to outlaw same-sex marriages on the grounds that they cannot sexually produce a child (although through adoption they can socially produce a child) without also outlawing post-menopausal and barren marriages.
Does this address your concern with same-sex marriage? Please inform me of any concerns not addressed or of any errors or gaps in my information or reasoning.
I eagerly await your reply, and further implore you not to change the constitution in the name of lifestyle discrimination. Please feel free to distribute this assessment to any interested colleagues.
-=-raptur-=-
