In response to James ‘Nourishing Obscurity’ Higham

My friend James Higham – learned counsel for the other side – has replied at length to the video I posted of Philip Spooner saying, in answer to whether he was supportive of gay rights, ‘what do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?‘, saying “Marriage is the union of two people for the purposes of procreation – end of story“. Well, gauntlet thrown, gauntlet picked up.

The first objection is this – not only was the question wrong for anyone in a polling place to ask because it presupposed that the wrong answer would impact on the person’s right to vote, something not provided for by the constitution but if it did not prevent the man from voting, then why was the question there in the first place?

If the question was asked actually inside the polling place, where people are actually putting the cross in a box, or whatever the local variant is, that would be a problem. I suspect that this was just as Mr Spooner was going into or coming out of the polling place. I’m not familiar with the procedures in Massachusetts, but the election officials in the UK would come down on you like a ton of bricks if you did that. There is no restriction, though, on speaking to people near the polling place (so long as it isn’t intimidatory). Secondly, the fact that something is not provided for in the Constitution is irrelevant. The Constitution is based on negative liberties – unless it says you must do or refrain from doing something, you can do what you want. Indeed, the tenth amendment reads

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

.

There is nothing in the US Constitution that prevents two people, on the way to vote, from discussing how they will cast their ballot.

The second objection is that it is a false question. You and I know full well that to just drop in the word “equality” and ask people to say whether they favour it or not will always produce a majority opinion in favour. That, however, is not what was really being asked. What was being asked was whether the person was in favour of gay marriage or not.

This becomes a semantic question. Does gay equality mean that we must allow gay marriage? I answer in the affirmative; James in the negative. James acknowledged this, and goes on to say

This is a blurring of two separate issues:

1. Do you believe that adult gays and lesbians should be able to pursue their lifestyle, insofar as they conform to the law, without fear or prejudice being shown towards them?

Most would say yes to that.

2. Do you agree that gays and lesbians have an equal right to marry as much as any heterosexual?

I think there is a real problem with that division. Let us substitute the term ‘people with blue eyes’ for ‘gays and lesbians’, mutatis mutandur, and see what happens.

1. Do you believe that adult people with blue eyes should be able to pursue their lifestyle, insofar as they conform to the law, without fear or prejudice being shown towards them?

2. Do you agree that people with blue eyes have an equal right to marry as much as any person with brown eyes?

In the second case, it’s very obvious that the law has been constructed to favour those with brown eyes against those with blue eyes. People with blue eyes can do whatever they want so long as they conform to the law and it is that law which prevents them from doing what they want to do. The law is cast unfairly.

Moving on, James says:

Here’s the logical fallacy. Same sex cannot marry, by definition. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition [until 2003, when the PCists got in and forced it to be changed]:

Main Entry: marriage
Pronunciation: ‘mar-ij also ‘mer-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Old French, from marier to marry
Date: 14th century
1 a : the state of being married b : the mutual relation of husband and wife : WEDLOCK c : the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family
2 : an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
3 : an intimate or close union

To which I say nonsense. All James has done is chosen a definition of marriage that he likes. I could simply choose a different one, or say that a family does not necessarily include children, or say that the definition was changed in 2003 to reflect changes in how the term is used.

Not only that but polls such as this one show that the majority do not accept that what gays have is a marriage – it’s a civil partnership. Even if they did achieve a majority that way, it is still pointless because it is like changing a science text to say that the sun rises in the west, just because a concerted propaganda campaign has convinced people of it.

In classical Greece, the household included slaves; in mediaeval Europe, servants. It can be extended or nuclear. The way in which we live changes; terms like ‘family’ are subjective in meaning.

The third objection is that not only are they blurring the question and presenting a false construct as a valid alternative but they are also lying about history. On the Meriam-Webster page, a commentator said that the only reason for that definition of marriage was that the man who wrote it was a fundamentalist Christian.

James then goes on to detail how marriage was seen as between a man and a woman in classical Greece, pharaoic Egypt and so on. Certainly, marriage was conceived of as between a man and a woman before Christianity appeared. I’m not sure that the construct is false – morality in the west is at least based on Judaeo-Christian values, and so, as marriage in those value is generally conceived of as being between a man and a woman, that it persists is no surprise. Judaeo-Christian values may be based on other values, or incorporate features of them, but the absence of many temples to Osiris in central London would suggest that the Egyptian mythos is not a major force. Marriage as described pre-dates Christianity, but it could have died out and Christianity was implemental in seeing that it did not die out. The inflexibility can be attributed to the fundamentalism.

In any case, I don’t really care what the ancients considered moral. Quite apart from their genocide, slavery and credulousness, to define one’s morality by any other’s actions, past or present, is to give up your rationality.

James then goes off on something of a flight of fancy, suggesting that ‘socialists’ are trying to rewrite history. Er… no. As I’ve tried to show, past definition does not apply today to a subjective term. Apparently, we are aiming for

1) Abolition of all ordered governments
2) Abolition of private property
3) Abolition of inheritance
4) Abolition of patriotism
5) Abolition of the family
6) Abolition of religion
7) Creation of a world government

I’m not sure where this came from – no link provided that I can see, but it is a load of garbage. (1) and (7) cancel each other out, the Christian Socialist Movement would have something to say about (6). (3) is a subset of (2), and that’s something than could be attributed to communists, not socialists or social democrats. Quite how we would go about abolishing feelings of kinship – (4) and (5) is beyond me. They survived the USSR, after all.

Ultimately, I see marriage as a contract between two adults. It’s no-one’s business how or why they enter into that contract. The only arguments other than ‘we don’t like gays’ against gay marriage have to do with marriage necessarily being a vehicle for procreation. That is a stupid thing to say – many couples can’t have children, many don’t want children.

xD.