I really like this flowchart, it succinctly summarizes two opposing views that this debate reduces to. Hopefully it will help others understand the issues more, even if they disagree with the conjugal view, because too many do not understand what is involved here. It’s easier to demand rights of a certain lifestyle than it is to understand where those rights come from. How we understand metaphysics, ethics, and reality in general will determine how we look at these issues. Unfortunately, more often than not, most people let emotions control their reasons or are not interested in studying the opposing side. If you’re that kind of person, you’re at worst, acting immorally, and at best, ignorant or stupid.
8 Responses to Flowchart: What Is Marriage?
Robert June 7, 2012
I’m tired, so my response to the content of this will have to wait until tomorrow. For now I just want to ask: how was this made, and how can I make one?
Robert June 8, 2012
So, here’s some thoughts:
1) Re sterile couples: I’m not convinced that the type/effect distinction is all that important.
2) Re children: I don’t agree that children deserve a mother and father specifically, but rather they deserve a loving, caring family that will benefit them, in any form.
3) Re rights: I don’t agree that something needs to fulfill a human function in order to be a right. Consider the right to bear arms – the only way to say that this fulfills a human function is to say it fulfills a right to be able to defend oneself. But our current gun laws don’t make us able to defend ourselves against, say, our own military. If the right to bear arms comes from our right to be able to defend ourselves, then it lets us own tanks and missiles as well as guns. But I don’t think anyone is going to grant that we have a right to own an ICBM. So the human function basis can’t work; which puts SSM back on the table, at least tentatively.
4) Re polygamy objection: I don’t actually see this one as an objection at all. As far as civil marriage and the law are concerned, why not polygamy?
5) Re harm objection: It’s not clear here what exactly the harm is, even if it does promote an incorrect view of human nature. Point to something tangible, then we can look at this further
6) Re consent objection: I agree with this one as stated. But I would also say that consent + lack of harm does justify something.
7) Re copyright 2012 Tim H.: It would be really nice if this time around, he would actually come around and engage in some dialogue. He was conspicuously absent from the discussion of his two previous guest posts on this subject. Can you let him know?
Tim Hsiao June 9, 2012
Hi Robert.
Why?
Why not? Since children are the offspring of their biological parents, their parents have duties to provide for, care for, and love them. This in turn implies that children have a claim or right to their parents’ attention, which implies a fortiori that they have a right to a mother and father.
The right to bear arms is a civil right, not a human right. Civil rights are an extension and enhancement of basic human rights (in this case, the right to self-defense). For a right of any sort to be legitimate it must be connected with fulfilling a human function in some way. An alleged right to same-sex marriage doesn’t meet this requirement.
I’m somewhat shocked that you don’t see a problem in this. I take it as obvious that if a position entails that a consensual relationship between any number of persons can be legitimately counted as a marriage, then that entailment alone is a sufficient reason to reject it.
Robert June 10, 2012
Why?
Perhaps this is too consequentialist for your tastes, but the outcomes are the same regardless of whether the sterility is caused by a type or an effect. So if there’s a distinction, I’d say it’s in name only.
Since children are the offspring of their biological parents, their parents have duties to provide for, care for, and love them.
I don’t agree that parental duty comes from a biological link. I’d say it comes from the construct of a parent/child relationship, regardless of whether the cause of that relationship is reproduction or adoption.
The right to bear arms is a civil right, not a human right.
This is actually a pretty good point. But as I’ve stated before, there’s other paths to SSM even if it’s not a right, such as allowing it as a privilege. I’d also like to state that regardless of whatever metaphysical nature marriage as a concept might have, I’m really only interested in civil marriage. And going back to consequentialism (I think a good argument could be made that laws should be based on purely consequentialist considerations), I think civil SSM would reduce harm economically, sociologically, and legally – simply because it’s not tangibly destructive.
I’m somewhat shocked that you don’t see a problem in this. I take it as obvious that if a position entails that a consensual relationship between any number of persons can be legitimately counted as a marriage, then that entailment alone is a sufficient reason to reject it.
First, I take many things as obvious that you would probably consider false, SSM being one of them – yet here I am discussing it.
Second, I wasn’t entirely sure what you meant by this part, so I had a little discussion about it with Gil. I argued that the statement “murder is immoral” is necessarily true, because murder just is an immoral killing. He said that here, you were trying the same line of reasoning for “polygamy is wrong”. If he is correct, then I can’t see where polygamy would be definitionally wrong, so please point it out. If he’s not, then please explain what you’re getting at here.
Finally, I considered points 5 and 6 in my first post to be the most important; yet you’ve said nothing about them. At this point I can only assume that holding a false belief is the harm – but I don’t see how we could make that work. If I adopted that position, I’d have to also adopt the position that Christianity causes harm; and if a parent raises their child as a Christian, then I might be justified in removing children from religious homes (and you would have to adopt the same position in reverse for nonreligious homes). But I think we can all agree that the new atheist “religion is child abuse” claim is completely untenable; because in the vast majority of cases of religious upbringing, there’s no actual harm done. So, could you give me your thoughts on what the harm is, as well as the point about consent + lack of harm?
Thrasymachus June 11, 2012
Is this meant to map out the Girgis argument in the citation? Or is it rather trying to give a ‘birds-eye view’ of the SSM debate?
If the latter, it seems a bit biased. It is all-to-easy to gently strawman opponents/leave out important points/offer less than charitable precis. The best evidence of bias here is that the ‘conjugal view’ side of the graph includes replies made against the objections made whilst the opposing view just gets objected to.
Gio June 12, 2012
I think it’s meant to map out the Girgis argument. I admit it’s biased, but it is a valid question how many objections/replies it can go on for (quite a bit). Even if Tim were to equalize it in terms of back-and-fourth dialog, one side could always ask for another set of points in their favor, then the other wants to equalize it, etc..
That being said, I think this is really meant as a “quick-reference” and the points can and should be fleshed out more in the context of a debate or web article anyway.
Thrasymachus June 13, 2012
Well, if it is mapping out Girgis, it might not be biased (although Girgis might well be, that’s sort of ‘par for the course’ when writing a paper!)
I agree that one could continue the back and forth for several-ply (probably not ad nauseum, as some of the lines will likely boil down to particular ethical/factual assertions which are held in dispute). However, ensuring ‘equal right of reply’ for both sides is a pretty basic pre-requisite: a debate where one speaker got an extra section of time to reply to his opponents objections isn’t fair.
[Parenthetically, I worry about 'quick reference guides' a similar 'pat answer generators' - not that I want to assume this is the motive behind this. I remember with some despair 'debating' with someone in an IM room who obviously had a word document for any 'apologetics topic' with juicy quotes/citations (none of which he had read the actual work from) which he would copy and paste in a dozen or so any time some apologetic flash point or other came up: Dude (PhD from here): "(Something that supports my point)". etc. I find these sorts of things off, although I struggle to articulate why - partly I think it is because these things short-circuit actually needing to understand the issues, and partly it seems bit offensive to just debate via copy and paste - we can have faster 'discussions' with our search bars.]
Gil Sanders June 16, 2012
Thras,
Well, I don’t think it’s intended as a “unbiased” look at the issue. The motive behind this is to simply provide a brief but summarized defense of the conjugal conception of marriage in comparison to how the revisionist understanding is normally defended. Really, it’s more or less for education purposes of our position because it so easily gets misunderstood in this debate. There are indeed some influences from Girgis’s work, but I don’t think that is its primary purpose.