http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070811/COPOLY11/Headlines/headdex/headdexComment/10/10/18/
Somerville, the great social conservative hope, argued that by allowing people of the same sex to marry each other, marriage would go from being a child centered institution to something based on love and that change would have unarticulated negative societal repercussions. I will not go into the reasons here why the Conservative opposition to Bill 38 was intellectually, morally and legally bankrupt. Suffice it to say, it was. What I want to point out is that when it comes to the nature of marriage Somerville got things hopelessly ass backwardness. SSM did not open the door to marriage being based on romantic love. On contrary, it is because marriage is an institution based on romantic love that opened the door to same sex marriage.
She is making the same mistake again. Believing that SSM is transformative change and not an outflow from what marriage has evolved into being, she mistaking believes that there is a straight line from SSM to polygamy. As she sees it, if marriage is based on romantic love, as she thinks was established with the passage of C 38, there is nothing to say why one person, at least in principle, can not be married two or more people at the same time. What matters is that they love each other. The problem with such an argument is not only is it historically wrong, it skips over virtually all current debate about polygamy. Namely, does the institution of polygamy breed a whole host of social evils? Most people in the West think it does. Somerville thinks she can just make the entire debate go away in just a few short sentences. To wit: “
Also, we need to be careful to distinguish under-age sex, forced marriage, spousal abuse and child abuse from polygamy, itself. These horrible crimes do occur in polygamous marriages - and monogamous ones - and must be dealt with severely.”She is wrong.
As for Somerville herself, perhaps it is because I am a consequentialist and so do not have the time of day for “natural law”, but I think the press is far too deferential and I think she is a very average thinker.
18 comments:
She is wrong.
Wrong about what, specifically?
She is wrong about pretty much everything, but in this instance I was refering to her belief that she can avoid the entire debate with but a mere wave of the hand.
"Somerville thinks she can just make the entire debate go away in just a few short sentences. To wit: 'Also, we need to be careful to distinguish under-age sex, forced marriage, spousal abuse and child abuse from polygamy, itself. These horrible crimes do occur in polygamous marriages - and monogamous ones - and must be dealt with severely.'
She is wrong."
I took that part to mean that she was saying that abuse of any kind can never be condoned, but that it would be difficult to deny people this living arrangement if it is based on their faith, and if nobody is hurt (i.e. full consent).
>>>> "I took that part to mean that she was saying that abuse of any kind can never be condoned, but that it would be difficult to deny people this living arrangement if it is based on their faith, and if nobody is hurt (i.e. full consent)."
It would be indeed be difficult to deny this kind of living arrangement if it produced no social ills. However saying so glosses over the fact that most educated people think it does produce social ills and there is a voluminous literature on the subject.
As for the happy threesome example you mentioned on Queer Liberal’s site, you seem to miss the fact that the law paints in board strokes. Indeed, it is possible. for example, to come up with any number of possible exceptions to aged based legislation based on various child genius scenarios. However, one would not want to do away with the prohibition against under age drinking just because some 14 year old with an IQ of 180 has mental capacity to understand the consequences of drinking a glass of beer!
Give it a rest and grow up Joanne. What a little baby. This isn't about polygamy at all with you. Its just another way of trying to take SSM away. The definition of marriage was changed to be gender neutral and is still between just two people.
All your incessant and whining is useless. You will never see the day when SSM is taken away. I'd be the first to sue the government if they did.
Sommerville has convinced me. We should legalize polygammy.
Why do you suppose the BC govt did not procede with the court case against the polygamists? Do you think it might have had anything to do with the SS issue and the fact that the cdn charter of rights would not prohibit polygamy.
The SS marriage thing is silly . . . . even historically liberal states in the US don't like the idea. The majority of kanooks feel the same way. Its time we stopped pandering to less than 3% of the population, what rude things you want to do in private is your business . . . what you are doing to society and traditional values is my business, butt out!!!
A successful society as you dream about has never existed!!
"Why do you suppose the BC govt did not procede with the court case against the polygamists? Do you think it might have had anything to do with the SS issue and the fact that the cdn charter of rights would not prohibit polygamy."
Let us see; SSM first became a reality in June 2003 and BC has failed to move on Bountiful community for decades. I suppose the legality of SSM in 2005 was the reason why attorney-general of BC did not go ahead with charges in 1992. Wow good argument old school.
Anyway, since the passing of SSM the issue of polygamy has gotten far more attention than it ever did in the past and the likelihood that the authorities will move on Bountiful is much more likely than in the past.
What we're doing to YOUR society ???
My marriage isn't silly . . . perhaps yours is. My marriage is the most important relationship I'll ever have on this planet and I take it most seriously.
And OUR society is doing just fine, us "canucks" happen to like our society. We consider the same-sex marriage resolved after 3 votes in 3 successive parliaments.
But thanks for your concern. Best of luck with your society.
What does it matter anyway about SSM? Harper won't touch it, neither will the next CPC leader if the party survives this "aloof" PM. So its off the table already. Its like whining about the Charter of Rights. They will never be able to can it.
Suck it up and move on because SSM has no relation to polgamy and any claims otherwise are only to try and reopen a settled debate that is now law with thousands of couples married. The so-cons are wasting their energy.
Find a new non-issue.
No matter how much Joanne whines, my marriage is the SAME has hers, equally valid and legal.
I am actually staring to like how this gets under her skin. Maybe if I had a choice to vote on polygamy I would support it just to give so-cons a new target to try and devalue and leave my marriage alone.
Holy Crap, what is eating her insides anyway? This is like having your first 2 tokes on a doob, and then stumbling to the east side and putting a needle in your arm! I swear to god she's the result of a first cousin marriage.
it is possible. for example, to come up with any number of possible exceptions to aged based legislation based on various child genius scenarios.
I'm not referring to anything other than consenting adults.
"I'm not referring to anything other than consenting adults."
I know. My point: "you seem to miss the fact that the law paints in board strokes."
Look, the rational for having a law against polygamy is not as Somerville would have it that we can in principle rule out the happy threesome or foursome etc. She is just attacking a strawman by claiming otherwise. Rather it is because on the whole polygamy has negative social consquences and the only way of nipping these in the bud is to impose a blanket prohibition.
Are you referring strictly to polygamy or polyamory in general?
"Are you referring strictly to polygamy."
What do you mean? Legally polygamy means the taking on of more than one spouse at the same time. As such, it is a general term.
Well, actually, there is polyamory, polygyny (of which polygamy is a variation), and polyandry.
Sometimes it's difficult to sort it all out.
Legally polygamy means the taking on of more than one spouse at the same time.
Legally in Canada you can't really take on more than one spouse at a time, so the extras are just live-in co-spouses.
--> "the rational for having a law against polygamy ..."
The rational is what?
If you agree with treating one-sexed combinations of people as married, then, why not multiple persons?
The rule of two is based on the two-sexed nature of humankind. Polygamy is a series of marriages, each including one husband and one wife, whereby the first wife does not marry her husband's second wife and neither the first nor the second wives marry a third wife.
In our pluralistic society, the limitation to one-marriage-at-a-time is not as SSM advocates have argued. It is not about love for there is no requirement, no test, no criteria established in law for "love".
But even if there was such a requirement, polygamy would be prohibited even if love was present and accounted for, right?
According to SSM advocates, marriage is about commitment, but that is usually also present in polygamy but not always present in monogamous marriage -- or is deficient as reflected in no-fault divorce laws.
So what is it? The sexual relations, perhaps?
Well, no, because there is no legal requirement that two men or two women do some shared sexual behavior to form a gay marriage, right? Under SSM, the relationship status is not about a sexualized relationship.
Of course, under the traditional form of marriage recognition, even in polygamous systems, marriage is both-sexed and, with the marriage presumption of paternity, it provides contingency for responsible procreation. That marriage presumtion cannot apply to any kind of one-sex-short combination of people (homosexual or not) and is extrinsic to the sex-segregative type of relationship of either the all-male or the all-female variety.
Marriage, at its core, integrates the sexes. Polygamy, does this, but given our society's customs, traditions, and laws, it does this in an inferior way to the one-marriage-at-a-time model of family formation. The case against polygamy is based on self-governance whereby family, founded on marriage, is preferable to the government owning civil society.
SSM argumentation favored the opposite where the government took ownership of the foundational social institution of marriage. That intervention was based on gay identity politics, not on the core of marriage.
Marriage combines 1) sex integration and 2) contingency for responsible procreation. It does this without government compulsion and without coercion from the legal system. This core of marriage, a social institution, a coherent whole, is nongovernmental. It arises from the two-sexed nature of humankind, the both-sexed nature of human generativity, and the both-sexed nature of human community. Marriage is the basis for the original, the basic, human community that entails the unity of man and woman and responsible procreation.
Polygamy is a variation on this but it is prone to segregation of the sexes, or at least greater segregation, in societies that have made it normative. Moreover, it undermines responsible procreation whereby each duo of mom and dad are directly responsible for the children they create (barring dire circumstances or tragedy). In polygamous systems, the husband typically has disproportionate authority over his children -- across multiple wives -- which also undermines the integration of the sexes on many levels.
So when SSM is imposed on a society, the core of marriage is rejected outright and provides no recourse for opponents of polygamy.
Why, as a supporter of SSM, would you oppose polygamy? The generalization of the law does not suffice because that was also rejected by SSM argumentation regarding the connection of marriage and procreation.
What definitive legal requirement of marriage stands in the way of a person entering multiple marriages at the same time? Surely you can rest just on the arbitrariness of the two-adult criterion when you have already rejected the reasoned and time-proven man-woman criterion of marriage.
Please explain further -- if not in a comment section, then, in a blogpost on this subject which has been in the news in Canada of late.
Thanks.
Chairm Ohn
Sorry for the typo:
Surely you cannot rest just on the arbitrariness of the two-adult criterion when you have already rejected the reasoned and time-proven man-woman criterion of marriage.
* * *
I should also add that when polygamy is normative in a society, it promotes clannishness as well as concentration of power among an elite of powerful men who amass economic and political influence through management of extensive familie "chains".
This works against self-governance and liberty for all of society. It segregates the sexes on multiple levels. It undermines responsible procreation. And we see the disenfranchisment (socially, economicaly, politically) of men -- especially young men -- whose chances to marry are reduced when powerful men hoard women via polygamous marriages.
Yet, polygamy, as per the major religions and traditions which make it normative in some societies, is justified for the sake of addressing social ills related to concerns about integration of the sexes and, especially, responsible procreation. That's no small part of the connundrum. It is certainly based on local conditions and cultural priorities of a given society.
But none of that is relevant to a system that has merged SSM with marriage recognition. Whether a "gay marriage" includes two men or a roomful of men, it would lack the core of marriage itself. Likewise the all-female combination. The lack of the other sex makes it sex-segregative; the lack of the other sex removes the marriage presumption of paternity and the sexualized aspect of public esteem for the conjugal relaitonship. So a merger of the one-sexed with the both-sexed combination cuts the core of marriage out of the relationship status, at law.
It does much the same to the idea of marriage on a cultural and social level. What is left is a non-sexual relationship type that has no reasonable basis for rejecting, say, up to 4 spouses per person, as in the most common polygamous systems around the world.
When SSM advocates said how would "gay marriages" harm other marriages, they skipped over the problem of how the SSM merger would harm the social institution itself. If a relationship type's core is not recognized, how can the relationship be identified, much less shown preferential treatment in society? It cannot. And that is unjust to all unions of husband and wife.
On the other hand, what is the core of the polygamous variation of marriage?
How does that core compare with the one-sexed variation?
I've described a comparision with the mongamous variation of the both-sexed relationship type that has been known, for milennia, as the conjugal relationship. But this is no longer applicable to marriage recognition in Canada since the SSM merger cut out the integration of the sexes and responsible procreation.
Cheers,
Chairm Ohn
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