‘Rights for me, but not for thee’

June 12, 2012 By 125 Comments

“Rights for me, but not for thee” creates all sorts of problems.

For example, if the rights are not for thee, then they aren’t actually rights, and so I can’t be confident in the rights for me either. “Rights for me, but not for thee” means that even my rights aren’t rights, merely privileges — and privileges are a whole lot more precarious than rights.

Another problem with this view is that those who embrace it also tend to imagine that its opposite must be true — that “rights for thee” would entail no rights for me. It creates a weird notion of zero-sum competition rather than legal equality.

All of which is to say that Bryan Fischer is six different kinds of confused about what rights are and what legal equality requires. His American Family Association, like the rest of the religious right, believes in RFMBNFT.

And that’s why Fischer says “If Gays Aren’t Discriminated Against, Christians Will Be.”

* * * * * * * * *

“The real challenge to marriage is heterosexual,” John Seel writes at ThinkChristian.

I agree with the general logic of this argument and with its rightful condemnation of speck-and-beam hypocrisy. Heck, I’ve made variations of this same argument myself.

But I’ve grown tired of conceding the idea that “the institution of marriage” is in trouble. It’s not. It’s a human institution and we humans still tend to like it. For all the hand-wringing about the health of “the institution of marriage,” the main reason so many people are talking about it is because people previously excluded from that institution are demanding to be allowed in.

Just think of the usual celebrities whose marital histories are invoked to bemoan the sorry state of the “institution” — the Lizzes and Larrys and Limbaughs. They’re all actually symbols of its vitality.

I think Rush Limbaugh is an awful person, but I can find this one thing to admire about him: After enduring the pain, misery and failure of divorce three times, he still mustered up the courage and hope that it took to give marriage another try. Limbaugh may be an obnoxious, narcissistic, misogynist, lying gasbag who’s impossible to live with, but that even such a cowardly guy is willing to try, try, try again shows that marriage remains an attractive, compelling possibility.

That’s not the sign of a failing institution.

* * * * * * * * *

I’m wondering how to classify what it is, rhetorically, that BooMan is doing here:

Because it’s obvious that if I can marry another man then I can marry my dog. And if it’s okay to marry my dog, it’s obviously okay for me to have sex with it. And if I can have sex with it, obviously I am going to do that.

There’s sarcasm involved, in that BooMan, himself, does not espouse the actual view he is stating there. He is pretending to espouse this view in order to ridicule it.

But what’s interesting here is the form of that ridicule. It’s not hyperbole. This is not an exaggerated form of the view his is ridiculing. And this isn’t a reductio ad absurdum — absurdum, yes, but not reductio. No reduction is needed to make this view absurd.

What this form of argument seems to be doing is presenting the view with greater clarity and explicitness than its own proponents are willing to do. Granted, BooMan doesn’t go out of his way to present it charitably, but that’s the point. Rather than try to show it in a favorable light, he shines a harsh, glaring spotlight onto what it is that proponents of this view are actually saying. The aim isn’t a charitable presentation, but a cruelly accurate one.

Is there a name for this form of argument? Because, in this case at least, I rather like it.

* * * * * * * * *

Following President Barack Obama’s statement of support, there were many, many thoughtful posts, comments and insights on same-sex marriage and Christianity that I didn’t manage to include in my collection of posts rounding those up. (See parts one, two, three and four.)

I got swamped and gave up trying to collect all the excellent comments coming from Christians all over the blogosphere. And that’s excellent. Not the my getting overwhelmed and giving up part, but the fact that there were so many such comments that I couldn’t keep up with them all.

Melissa @ Permission to Live includes many that I missed in a nice round-up of posts on “Christianity and the LGBTQ Community.” And James McGrath has a bunch more at “Christianity and Same-Gender Relationships around the Blogosphere.”

The substance of these posts is good, but just as exciting is the sheer number of them. This voice within American Christianity is getting louder, broader, deeper. It’s gaining momentum.

That’s a Good Thing.

Filed Under: evangelicals Tagged With: , , , , 125 Comments
← Older Comments
  • Ursula L

    A law limiting the number of times you can remarry after divorce has the potential of giving a spouse tremendous coercive power.

    Because both spouses may not, and in likelihood will not, have the same number of marriages/divorces behind them.

    Consider a marriage between A and B.  A has been married and divorced a number of times so that if A and B divorce, A may not legally marry again.  B is in a position (either not married before, or married and divorced but not so often as to have future marriage limited by law) so that if A and B divorce, B may legally marry again.

    Things go wrong, and B wants to, for whatever reason, divorce.  B does not wish harm on A, hopes A has a good and happy future, is willing to comply with the just division of property and any ongoing payments that B is required by law to make to A.  B just wants out of the marriage.

    But A can say to B “If we divorce, you have the chance to remarry, and live happily ever after, but I can’t remarry, and I will, by law, be left to die alone, unmarried and unloved.”  While the “unloved” bit is not certain, that claim is pretty much true. No matter what the circumstances, A can not legally marry again. 

    And if B wants out of the marriage, but doesn’t wish harm on A, then the law becomes a way for A to manipulate B, because being a person who can not legally marry a person you wish to marry is a genuine legal, financial and emotional hardship.

    And if a relationship is in a state so that one party wants it to end, the law should not give the other party any extra coercive power to manipulate the first party into staying, when it is not in the first party’s best interest.  

    ***

    And if they do divorce, such a law puts A in the exact same position as a person who wants to marry someone of the same sex in a place where same-sex marriage is not legal. 

    ***

    So, in the future, A wants to marry C.  But the law prevents A from marrying C.

    But C does have the right to get married.  But C is prohibited from marrying the person C wants to marry.  

    Every problem with the prohibition on same-sex marriage, or the historical prohibitions on interracial marriage, now applies.  ”You have the right to marry, but you don’t have the right to marry the person you want to marry.”

    ***

    C is in a job that does not provide health insurance.  A is in a job where they can get a family plan health insurance.  They wish to marry, but can’t.  They choose to live together as if married, and things go well, they’re happy, if they had been able to marry, they would not want divorce.  But C is still left uninsured.  So C becomes ill, requires expensive medical treatment, and both A and C are financially devastated by trying to care for C. 

    While C is in the hospital, A wants to be their as next of kin, caring for C and wanting to be responsible for C, as if they were married as they wish to be.  And C wants A’s support, and for A to be the person who has the rights and powers to make decisions as C’s spouse and next of kin.  But because they can’t legally marry, C’s next of kin is a blood relation, perhaps one whom C dislikes and mistrusts, and whom C does not want making decisions or having power on C’s behalf.  

    ***

    A legal prohibition on marriage is something that has huge consequences.  

    And even if a couple is statistically more likely to divorce if one or both of them has divorced in the past, preventing them from marrying is a huge injustice.  

    ***

    This also assumes that divorce is, in and of itself, a bad thing.

    But it isn’t.  

    Divorce can be bad, to the extent that it can be emotionally, socially and financially costly.

    But it is much, much less bad as a marriage continuing when one or both parties wants the marriage to end.  

    If someone has been divorced, I’m comfortable seeing them marry in the future, because I know that they have the ability to leave if things go wrong.  

    ***

    The marriages that I find frightening and problematic for society are those where one or both partners considers divorce so wrong that they would not leave if the relationship becomes abusive, or if they would fight the other leaving when the other wants to leave.

    I work as a personal care assistant for a physically disabled woman whose parents have an abusive relationship.  Specifically, her father is physically abusive to her mother, and also emotionally manipulative and abusive, such as preventing her from working outside the home and refusing to let her drive, so that she is physically trapped in the home.   

    I know that this is true not only from the daughter’s words, but from the fact that, when I have driven her to visit her family, I have never seen the two parents not wind up fighting at some point, and I have seen physical damage to their house, such as holes in the wall where the father has punched through the drywall when the mother ducked, and one remarkable person-shaped hole which if the evidence of the time one of the adult sons threw the father into the wall to stop him when he was attempting to physically attack the mother with a pair of scissors.  

    But the mother stays, because she was taught, and believes, that Divorce Is Wrong.  

    ***

    But divorce isn’t wrong.

    Marriage is good, when two legally competent adults who are not otherwise committed to another person in marriage wish to marry.

    Divorce is good, when one or both parties to a marriage wish not to be married any more. 

  • http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

     

    I notice tax breaks to corporations are hardly ever talked about as “the
    government giving money directly to corporations”. Tax deductions or
    lower rates for the rich are never referred to as “the government giving
    money directly to people”. Makes the entire idea sound pretty
    suspicious to me.

    Then you have not read Linda McQuaig’s several books on the subject of lopsided Canadian taxation and how the tax expenditure concept shines light on the way large corporations are effectively given subsidies without anyone ever needing to officially shine light on the question of why the government is effectively subsidizing them.

    Kindly avoid being so abrasively dismissive, please.

  • http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

    Also, “50% of marriages end in divorce” is very different from (as it is often misphrased) “50% of all married people will get divorced.” In a group containing me, my wife, my parents, my sister, her husband, Rush Limbaugh, and his wife, 50% of the marriages among that group ended in divorce, but only one-eighth (maybe one fourth) of the people in the group have been divorced.

  • http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

    So, in the future, A wants to marry C.  But the law prevents A from marrying C.
    But C does have the right to get married.  But C is prohibited from marrying the person C wants to marry.  
    Every problem with the prohibition on same-sex marriage, or the historical prohibitions on interracial marriage, now applies.  ”You have the right to marry, but you don’t have the right to marry the person you want to marry.”

    Every argument against marriage equality that isn’t based around the forthright desire to hurt people seems to assume that spouses are fungible; if I deny you the right to marry the person you love, you can just marry some other person with the proper set of genitals. 
    —-

    Divorce is good, when one or both parties to a marriage wish not to be married any more.

    The same way heart bypasses are good and, for that matter, abortions are good. If you find yourself needing one, the plain-and-simple sort of “good” is already off the table.

  • aunursa

    I think we’ve got enough from this thread alone to call your authority as the arbiter of any moral issue into question.

    I share my opinion, you share your opinion.  I’ve never claimed to be the arbiter of any political or moral issue.

    If a person marries someone who turns out to be  an abuser, then I would give the victim another swing.   A person who has already married three people who turned out to be abusers ought to be thinking long and hard about how they are picking the wrong partner, and what help they can get to make sure that they don’t make the wrong choice a fourth time.

    I sure wouldn’t support you in an effort to get the law to conform more to your framework if ‘divorce’ seems to be a greater crime against the legitimacy and sanctity of a marriage than smaller offenses such as ‘abuse’ or ‘adultery’.

    1.  I have no plan to get the law to conform to my framework.  I am merely sharing my opinion, what I would do if I were in charge.  I am aware of no effort, formal or informal, to limit the number of marriages based on any criteria.  I am neither asking nor seeking anyone’s support for such a proposal.

    2.  You are putting words into my mouth.  If it were up to me, those guilty of Abuse, Adultery, and Addiction would be entitled to fewer strikes, not more.  Abuse would probably be one strike and you’re out.  Adultery and addiction would probably be two strikes.

  • aunursa

    As far as I can see, the government’s preconceptions seem to be that it will involve two people (of opposite genders, in certain states). Adultery is no longer criminal. The state makes no effort to force people in open or even polyamorous relationships to divorce, etc, etc. You might not like that, but that’s how the government deals with marriage currently.

    I am not seeking to criminalize adultery.  I am not seeking to force people to divorce.  I am not seeking to change how the government deals with marriage.  I am merely sharing my opinion.  You might not like that, but that’s how blog comment sections work.

  • P J Evans

     Then make sure you put at the top of you comment, in large friendly letters, that’s its your opinion. Or you can try keeping your narrow-minded opinions to yourself.

  • Nenya

    @Jenny: Was that Slashers of Gor (by bellatrys, among others) on LiveJournal, by any chance? That was hilarious. I’m eternally sad that bellatrys fell off the Internets, too. She was an early influence on me in a lot of ways.

  • MadGastronomer

     ”Hardly ever” is not “never,” nor is it “no one ever has.” You can give me one example of someone who talks about that. That makes her very much in the minority, which is entirely in line with what I actually said.

    I’ll be as abrasive, and as dismissive, as I like. One of them I can’t help much, and the other one is usually a considered choice.

  • MadGastronomer

     Oh, I do love it when you get all, “But this is the way the internet works! I get to say whatever I like! I get to voice my opinion!” Yes, aunursa, and no one’s stopping you from doing so. We’re just telling you you’re full of shit, and pointing out exactly where, how, and why the opinion you’re voicing would be damaging and dangerous to people if put into action in the real world. You’re proposing an idea that would harm people, and it’s trivial to see that it would do so. So some of us have the opinion that you’re a bad person, and we’re sharing that opinion with you here in this discussion forum, because that’s how these work.

  • http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

    The emtire concept of ‘tax expenditures’ was originated, as far as I can tell,  ultimately in rather arcane and dry circles of ecomomists who discuss government budgeting processes.

    It is decidedly not in the contexts I’ve read it in (incidentally, beyond just McQuaig’s writings – among the left generally in my experience the concept is used this way) a philosophy of “the government gets to grab you and say ‘gimme money’”.

    In fact in my experience right-wing politicians and economists seem rather reluctant to touch the notion of ‘tax expenditures’, probably because the philosophy seems to run along these lines:

    1. The governmnet statutorily passes a law saying “these are the tax rates that shall be levied”.
    2. The official rates get the most discussion because they’re the easiest to obtain.
    3. The  government then quietly carved out exemptions to the statutory tax rates to extend favors to selected political groups, usually wealthy people or certain corporations.

    The consequence of (3) is that although the government sets a rule regarding taxes that claims to have been impartially arrived at through the poltiical process, in fact the government effectively foregoes collecting taxes from those who can most afford it, and does so quietly in order to avoid the unwelcome publicity that a line item in the budget would cause.

    Believe me when I say that the interpretation you have? Is not one I’ve seen before and certainly left-wing Canadians don’t have a dialog that focusses on the notion that the government (federal or provincial) uses the idea of ‘tax expenditures’ as a viable way to attack the poor.

    (In point of fact, the usual bromides of ‘increasing competition’, ‘brain drain’, ‘rewarding the successful’, are far, FAR more common.)

  • Tapetum

     This, this, this!

    My parents do not have a successful marriage, despite being married for 54 years last week. My mother hates my father. My father is so oblivious to my mother as a person that he doesn’t realize that she hates him and has for at least 30 years. That everyone in their vicinity, except me and my brothers, thinks they’re the ideal of a proper marriage is infuriating beyond belief.

    My eldest brother got married, realized about three years in that his marriage was heading down the same path as our parent’s, and got divorced as fast as he was able. He and his ex-wife are both now happily remarried, and the two couples are friends with each other (he was an usher at her second wedding).

    My brother’s second marriage is a definite success, but to my way of thinking, his first one was infinitely more successful than my parent’s marriage. It lasted as long as it was contributing to the happiness of its two participants and no longer, and it poisoned nobody.

  • Sgt. Pepper’s Bleeding Heart

    Believe me when I say that the interpretation you have? Is not one I’ve seen before and certainly left-wing Canadians don’t have a dialog that focusses on the notion that the government (federal or provincial) uses the idea of ‘tax expenditures’ as a viable way to attack the poor***.

    I’ll probably regret jumping into this argument, but in Australia tax expenditure is a pretty dry, academic concept too. Furthermore, I’ve read, listened to and been involved in lots of discussions about tax expenditure (hi, fellow policy nerds) and in the vast, vast majority they have focused on the fact that when you include tax deductions and exemptions, rather than cash transfers only, total expenditure is skewed much more towards wealthy individuals and companies than most people expect. I’ve been scratching my head for 15 minutes and I can’t remember an occasion when tax expenditures were raised by someone as part of an exercise in bashing the poor.

  • Sgt. Pepper’s Bleeding Heart

    The idea that whether or not you can get health insurance depends on your marital status is alien and freaky to me. What the hell.

  • Ice9

    http://thenonsequitur.com/  calls identifies the fallacy of the “iron man argument”–opposite of the “straw man”, the Iron Man intentionally portrays the opponent’s argument as stronger than it is in order to declare defeat or inspire fear in an audience that considers the argument a secondary part of the conflict. BooMan’s sarcastic so that makes this an Ironic Iron Man.
    ice9

  • Tonio

     

    I have no plan to get the law to conform to my framework.  I am merely sharing my opinion, what I would do if I were in charge.

    None of us gets to have it both ways. One can have an opinion that abusers and addicts shouldn’t get married. But “What I would do if I were in charge” is indeed about wanting the law to conform solely to one’s own opinions and to nothing else. Excusing that tyrannical concept as merely opinion amounts to disguising it as “There oughta be a law” venting.

  • AnonymousSam

    Ah, once again it falls to the victims to clean up after the messes of the absurdly privileged…

  • renniejoy

    Are marriage licenses like driver’s licenses (or cosmetology licenses) or dog licenses (or vehicle registration)?

    Driver’s licenses are an indication that a person has met specific requirements and now allowed by law to drive.

    Dog licenses* are legal recognition of a relationship** that would exist with or without that recognition.

    I vote for the latter.

    * I am not saying that any person’s spouse or prospective spouse is a dog.

    ** I am not saying that marriage is ownership.

     

  • http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

    Marriage licenses are a little of both. They are the legal recognition of an existing relationship, and they are an indication that the couple has met specific requirements that entitle their relationship to such recognition.

  • DavidCheatham

    While I must agree with the idea that we should not attempt to restrict marriages in any way, waiting periods seem somewhat reasonable to me. 

    I find it somewhat odd that a lot of people here seem to think it would cause delays in their own circumstances. It’s worth pointing out that we _did_ have a waiting period in most places, called a ‘blood test’. We’ve removed that mostly, but not because it caused problems, but because it was somewhat useless.

    If there’s a delay in a marriage, when you plan the marriage, you do the delayed thing _first_. This is not rocket science. You do not wait until the day of the wedding and go ‘Oh noes, we have to wait another month!’

    The only reason a delay of, for example, a month, would cause issues is if someone  _decided to get married and doing so in less than a month_. Which is, uh, the entire point of the delay. Otherwise, when people get engaged, they’d just check the list of things they need to do before the wedding, and do that stuff as soon as possible.

    However, I will concede that, in certain circumstances marriages ‘need’ to happen faster than that due to some time limit, although exceptions could handle most of them, there are circumstances where it would cause too much delay. So I’ll pull back off on those, although I think a week delay would be acceptable to almost everyone. (With, perhaps, an exception for late-term pregnancy and anyone who is willing to swear under oath they might not live another week.) Sign a form, come back in a week to sign the license. (Or, much more likely, sign it when the person you hired to perform the ceremony gives it as part of general paperwork, well in advance of the wedding.)

    Also I think it might be a good idea if the government actually listed some recommendations about marriage, like ‘Lived in the same house for at least three months’(1) and ‘Talked about whether or not you want children’ and ‘Talked about where you see yourself in five years and in twenty years’ and stuff like that.No one has to do those things, but it would be nice to see a checklist on the forms being signed, saying things like ‘Check if you have cohabited for three months, or if you both agree that you are ready to be married without doing that.’ (It’s one checkbox, it’s no one’s business if you actually did or not, but you still have to read every box and put a check there.)

    The joke is, anti-abortion people are making incredibly huge loops to jump through to get an abortion, but I bet my suggestion that the government saying people _should_ cohabit before marriage (without actually requiring it) would spark much more outrage, despite that demonstrably reducing divorce. (Or, to be technical, demonstrably reducing marriages that would end in divorce.)

    I find it very odd that churches require consoling, and the government feels perfectly fine giving nutritional advance and other advice, but not a single word of ‘Hey, here’s some stuff that, when people do them before marriage, their marriage lasts longer. Just FYI.’.

    1) It sorta struck me as odd when I came home for my brother’s wedding, and found he was staying at my mother’s house also. Because he didn’t sleep in the same house as my future sister-in-law in the lead up to their wedding. (A house that he jointly owned with her). Instead, he went over there every morning as soon as he woke, and left in the evening to come back just to sleep. So he was basically ‘commute cohabiting’.

    This was for some very perception of some religious thing, and struck me as very strange.

    I mean, if they had wanted to have sex, they could have had it during the day and no one would know. And there _were_ two bedrooms there, so it’s not like sleeping in the same house would require being in the same bed.

    (Let’s see if the paragraph breaks work this time.)

  • http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

     

    … government actually listed some recommendations about marriage, [...]  a checklist on the forms being signed, saying things like ‘Check if you have cohabited for three months, or if you both agree that you are ready to be married without doing that.’ (It’s one checkbox, it’s no one’s business if you actually did or not, but you still have to read every box and put a check there.)

    I would be opposed to this, but as long as it was worded in such a way that I didn’t have to either lie or share private information to jump that particular bureaucratic hoop, I wouldn’t devote much effort to opposing it.

    I’m all for people creating such recommendations, and I’m all for people using the ones that make sense to them, but I see no reason to obligate the government to maintain a particular one-size-fits-all checklist.

  • http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

     Oh, and: are you the rennie joy I once did Shakespeare with?

  • renniejoy

     No, my only acting was in high school shows. :(

    My question is sort of about framing.

    Is marriage something the government allows people to do, like driving, selling liquor, or cutting hair?

    Or is marriage more like registering a vehicle, where there are minimum requirements for the government to say, “oh okay, you have a relationship, let’s make sure we have that on record”?

    I know which one I want it to be, maybe some people agree with me…

  • http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

    Well, my answer remains “a little of both.”

    Or, to be more precise, the word “marriage” refers to (at least) two different things, one of which is a social arrangement, and the other of which is a legal arrangement.

    The government establishes requirements for acknowledging that the former exists, in recognition of which they grant the latter.  The former can exist in the absence of the latter, though, and the latter can exist in the absence of the former.

  • http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

    It does seem kinda strange, in retrospect, that you don’t need to take some kind of test to get a marriage license. Obviously legislating whose relationship counts is all kinds of problematic, but I wouldn’t be opposed — and would indeed see the utility — in there being a quick set of a half-dozen questions to establish that you understand the legal rights and responsibilities you’re signing up for. It’s kinda strange that the state doesn’t even have, like, a little booklet they give you listing out all the legal implications of marriage. 

← Older Comments