“Domestic partnerships” aren’t enough

Nevada’s domestic partnership law provides for rights and responsibilities that are similar, but not identical, to marriage. Among these are hospital visitation rights and the ability to make healthcare decisions for one’s spouse if they’re unable. But that wasn’t good enough for Spring Valley Hospital. When Terri-Ann Simonelli asked if she would be able to make decisions on behalf of her partner Brittany Leon, who was experiencing complications with her pregnancy, if she were incapacitated, they were told a domestic partnership wasn’t enough:

But that’s not what happened, they said. An admissions officer told them the hospital policy required gay partners to secure power of attorney before making any medical decisions for each other.

They protested, even offering to go home and return with their domestic partnership document. But they said the admissions officer told them that didn’t matter – Simonelli would need a power of attorney.

Leon later lost the pregnancy. The hospital still isn’t budging:

A woman who identified herself as public relations representative at Spring Valley Hospital told a Review-Journal reporter in a phone interview that the hospital policy requires gay couples have power of attorney in order to make medical decisions for each other.

When asked if she was aware of Nevada’s domestic partnership law, she accused the reporter of bias and hung up the telephone.

This is why civil unions, domestic partnerships, reciprocal beneficiaries and all other recently-invented “marriage alternatives” for same-sex couples are simply inadequate. Most people are completely unfamiliar with what these new legal devices actually mean in a practical sense, whereas the properties and implications of a marriage are firmly established and widely recognized. They know what a marriage is, but they don’t know what a “domestic partnership” is. As long as certain classes of people are barred from marriage and instead offered these weak substitutes, their relationships will never be seen as equal. No one can honestly believe that the rest of the world will treat these loving commitments as they would treat marriages – even the government couldn’t bring itself to treat them as marriages.

“Domestic partnerships” aren’t enough
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And that proves what, exactly?

On their official blog, the National Organization for Marriage promotes an interview with Dawn Stefanowicz, who’s made a living from talking about how terrible it was to grow up with a gay father in the ’60s and ’70s. Based on her single data point, Stefanowicz has frequently testified against the legalization of same-sex marriage. You might be wondering: how does that even follow? Well, I don’t know either.

NOM’s secret documents show that they allocated $120,000 toward “Children of same-sex couples and their concerns – outreach coordinator to identify children of gay parents willing to speak on camera”, so it isn’t surprising that they would take an interest in Stefanowicz and her story. As long as imaginary threats to children remain a politically effective talking point against gay marriage, NOM will predictably reach for anything that could conceivably back this up – even if it’s just a single, decades-old example.

NOM’s reference to Stefanowicz’s case as though it means anything is just another manifestation of the raw homophobia undergirding their cause. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that Stefanowicz’s childhood was as completely terrible as she claims, all this shows is that it is possible for same-sex couples to be bad parents – something which was never in dispute. But how can this be extended into a case against same-sex parenting in general?

There are plenty of instances of heterosexual couples mistreating their children, and you don’t have to go back decades to find such examples. NOM could use this exact same line of argument to campaign against heterosexual parents as a whole. But they don’t. The difference isn’t one of how same-sex parents treat their children as compared to opposite-sex parents, it’s one of NOM choosing to apply this logic to gay people but not straight people. What do we call that? Prejudice.

And that proves what, exactly?

Catholic bishop pulls a “think of the children”

In an interview with the Catholic News Agency, Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Oakland Diocese cited the flawed and widely criticized Regnerus study as evidence that “Children do best with a mother and a father.” Not content with unjustly impugning the parenting ability of same-sex couples, he proceeded to claim that same-sex marriage is itself “unjust to children”:

The legalization of “gay marriage” in America, even on a civil level, is unjust to children and poses a threat to religious liberty, warned Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of Oakland, Calif.

“Marriage is the only institution we have that connects children to their mothers and fathers,” he said. “So really, the question is, do you support that institution?” […]

“Marriage is about fundamental justice for children,” he said. “Children do best with a mother and a father.”

Cordileone apparently saw no need to explain how same-sex couples being legally married would in any way prevent marriage from continuing to fulfill its alleged role in “connecting children to their mothers and fathers”. (Nor did he explain how legal prohibition of same-sex marriage would serve to prevent same-sex couples from raising children anyway.) He seems to be under the impression that marriage can only perform one function, and any role for marriage in addition to its “connecting” purpose must compromise that original function. This zero-sum model of marriage does not reflect reality.

If an opposite-sex couple has no children and does not intend to have any, or they have children from previous relationships, their choice to marry does no damage to anyone else’s marriage. No other family will falter, no connection between parents and their children will be severed, just because two people got married and did not conform to Cordileone’s favored “two biological parents” model. Cordileone may believe that no one should be having children out of wedlock, divorcing, remarrying, or doing anything that would separate a child from their biological parents. But we don’t see the Catholic Church making any organized effort to campaign against divorce, remarriage, single parenthood, sex or childbearing outside of marriage, or even same-sex parenting itself, in the realm of civil law. They have only chosen to make same-sex marriage an issue to fight in the legal sphere. This has absolutely no relevance to any of Cordileone’s goals, even within his own system of beliefs.

Catholic bishop pulls a “think of the children”

Catholic bishop pulls a "think of the children"

In an interview with the Catholic News Agency, Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Oakland Diocese cited the flawed and widely criticized Regnerus study as evidence that “Children do best with a mother and a father.” Not content with unjustly impugning the parenting ability of same-sex couples, he proceeded to claim that same-sex marriage is itself “unjust to children”:

The legalization of “gay marriage” in America, even on a civil level, is unjust to children and poses a threat to religious liberty, warned Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of Oakland, Calif.

“Marriage is the only institution we have that connects children to their mothers and fathers,” he said. “So really, the question is, do you support that institution?” […]

“Marriage is about fundamental justice for children,” he said. “Children do best with a mother and a father.”

Cordileone apparently saw no need to explain how same-sex couples being legally married would in any way prevent marriage from continuing to fulfill its alleged role in “connecting children to their mothers and fathers”. (Nor did he explain how legal prohibition of same-sex marriage would serve to prevent same-sex couples from raising children anyway.) He seems to be under the impression that marriage can only perform one function, and any role for marriage in addition to its “connecting” purpose must compromise that original function. This zero-sum model of marriage does not reflect reality.

If an opposite-sex couple has no children and does not intend to have any, or they have children from previous relationships, their choice to marry does no damage to anyone else’s marriage. No other family will falter, no connection between parents and their children will be severed, just because two people got married and did not conform to Cordileone’s favored “two biological parents” model. Cordileone may believe that no one should be having children out of wedlock, divorcing, remarrying, or doing anything that would separate a child from their biological parents. But we don’t see the Catholic Church making any organized effort to campaign against divorce, remarriage, single parenthood, sex or childbearing outside of marriage, or even same-sex parenting itself, in the realm of civil law. They have only chosen to make same-sex marriage an issue to fight in the legal sphere. This has absolutely no relevance to any of Cordileone’s goals, even within his own system of beliefs.

Catholic bishop pulls a "think of the children"

A burst of illogic from Julia Gillard

When asked to defend her opposition to marriage equality, this was the best the Australian PM could do:

Prime Minister Gillard drew on her own relationship to defend her opposition to same-sex marriage on ABC TV last night.

Ms Gillard is not married to her long-term partner Tim Mathieson, but said that didn’t mean they weren’t in a committed relationship.

“I think you can have a relationship of love and commitment and trust and understanding that doesn’t need a marriage certificate associated with it,” Ms Gillard told Q&A.

I see. So, since we know that straight people can have loving relationships without a marriage certificate, that means we don’t need legal recognition of straight marriages. Makes sense, right?

Wait, you mean that wasn’t what she was saying? She was actually arguing against recognizing gay marriages? And this is just another disingenuous argument selectively applied to gay people?

No way.

A burst of illogic from Julia Gillard

A napkin is not an argument: Deconstructing Santorum

I really hate it when I have to make someone’s own argument for them. Simply being wrong is one thing – at least this can be handled directly. But if you’re so unintelligible that we all have to try and reconstruct what you meant before we can reply, that’s just laziness. Yes, I’m looking at you, Rick Santorum.

Over the past month, the former senator has deployed an increasingly bizarre series of analogies in an attempt to explain why marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples. The typical structure of his argument involves claiming that a certain thing is not another different thing, and that this thing will remain what it is regardless of what anyone calls it. To illustrate this, he’s pointed out at various times that a napkin is not a paper towel, a glass of water is not a glass of beer, a tree is not a car, and a cup of tea is not a basketball.

What are the implications of this? Santorum insists that the essence of marriage is not something that can be changed, indicating that he seems to envision marriage as some kind of untouchable abstract concept that exists independently of humans and their opinions. In other words, marriage is something that’s between a man and a woman, regardless of how we choose to define it. As an argument in favor of his position, this is almost entirely devoid of substance. If the question is why marriage should consist of a man and a woman, his answer is only a restatement of this claim: that marriage consists of a man and a woman. All the talk about napkins and beer is just an attempt to make such a simple assertion seem more meaningful than it really is.

Even if marriage did exist as some concrete and unchanging entity in the space of abstract ideas, this still doesn’t make that particular definition binding on us in terms of how we treat marriage in a legal, social, and practical sense. In reality, marriage is a complex and detailed phenomenon, and we’re in charge of how we choose to manage this regardless of any static metaphysical definitions of what marriage is. In practice, marriage is whatever we designate as marriage. And if we were beholden to this supposed Platonic form of straight-only marriage, what’s to stop us from simply developing some kind of inclusive super-marriage that encompasses a variety of marital relationships? Marriage could remain as whatever Santorum claims it is, but that doesn’t mean we have to incorporate this particular concept into how we regard people’s intimate relationships.

Of course, this is not the only component of his argument. As he sees it, marriage must be between a man and a woman because it provides a benefit to both partners, serves the purpose of raising children, offers stability to the family, and contributes to society as a whole. While this is at least more informative than merely claiming that marriage is inherently heterosexual, none of these elements of marriage are exclusive to straight people. It makes no sense to say that only heterosexual couples could possibly benefit from marriage, or have children to take care of, or require stability, or contribute to their community. If gay couples serve the very same role as straight couples, why wouldn’t they be included under this definition of marriage? A napkin may not be a paper towel, but the corollary to this is that a napkin is indeed a napkin.

Santorum contends that any departure from a heterosexual ideal of marriage would then legitimize marriages that are polygamous or incestuous in nature. But this is equally applicable to his own argument. If this limited definition of marriage is supposed to preclude the possibility of any other such marriages being recognized, why would another limited definition that includes gay couples be unable to do the same? And if another exclusive definition that goes no further than encompassing gay and straight couples would somehow open the door to incest and polygamy, how is his own definition any more capable of preventing this?

Marriages of an incestuous or polygamous nature have taken place throughout history, and these marriages still happened regardless of his Platonic marital ideal. Clearly, they were also not the result of same-sex marriage being recognized. Widespread disapproval of homosexuality did nothing to stop people from committing incest and polygamy. As Rick Santorum would say, if two people can get married, then why not three people, or 10 people?

In light of this, it’s plain to see that his heterosexual definition of marriage does not occupy some privileged position in terms of its ability to prevent any such additional unions. So what grounds does he have to demand this from a standard of marriage that includes gay couples? If incest and polygamy are what he objects to, then he can make an argument against incest and polygamy. But an argument against incest and polygamy is not an argument against gay marriage. And it’s also not a napkin.

A napkin is not an argument: Deconstructing Santorum