conservatives continue their attempts to destroy the institution of marriage

[Alcon]

Look moderately upward in the sky! It's a moderately paced bird!

No! It's a plane traveling at a moderate speed!

It's Wulfric!

That's really not funny. This isn't a spam thread.

yeah it is.
welcome to the U.S. General Discussion Board!

(You have to admit, the fact that you hold a different position than the majority of other people on this forum is hilarious!)

I suppose that is hilarious depending on how you look at it. In any case, something I've always committed to is that I won't change my beliefs because of polling or 'what society wants me to think' and instead will change my positions based on what I honestly think. (and my thoughts can change. For a quick example, I used to be against civil unions. And I didn't start supporting a balanced budget until a couple years ago.)

OK, then let's discuss why you're against gay marriage.

It's been a while since I argued with someone for holding a conservative position, actually!

[Alcon]

okay cool glad you support interracial marriage, now let's debate gay marriage

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Wulfric?  I'd really like to discuss this.  I PMed you, and I know you've been browsing/posting, so I'm hoping for a response.

[Alcon]

Wulfric,

I'm going to start off by saying I don't really care about your position on the federalism issue.  It's your personal opposition to same-sex marriage that I have a problem with.

bedstuy's response is pretty much identical to what I would have posted.  I'm sorry, but to be blunt, your argument is terrible.  I really rarely say arguments are meritless, but this one is.  You're narrowing the purpose of incentivizing marriage solely to incentivizing procreation, which is silly, because marriage also has other social benefits.  The rest of your argument is equally as flawed.

bedstuy already pointed out the problems with the "ideal world" argument, but let me add on to it.  Ignoring the fact that being raised in a same-sex household doesn't appear to be meaningfully sub-optimal*, your argument makes no sense, dude. First off, the question isn't whether you're incentivizing an ideal circumstance, but whether you're incentivizing circumstances that are better than would currently exist.  Here's an example: it isn't an ideal circumstance to grow up poor.  Does that mean we should ban marriage for the poor?  Of course not.  It makes no sense.  The poor are going to have children, and all else being equal, it would be better if those children were provided the stability and financial benefits of the marital institution!

You might say, in that case, "but by not incentivizing same-sex marriage, fewer gay people might adopt children, producing fewer sub-optimal outcomes."  First off, the evidence does not indicate that children adopted by same-sex couples have suboptimal outcomes at all, so this argument fails on face.  Beyond that, think about the implications of your argument.  Children of mixed-race couples face more difficulties than white children.  The poor, like I said above, have much worse outcomes.  Being short is hard, too, and it's genetically inherited, so having short parents is sub-optimal.  There are tons of demographic variables that actually do affect outcomes, unlike same-sex parentage.

Would you ever consider restricting those groups from marriage?  Probably not.  I imagine those strike you as totally absurd.  Maybe they strike you as so absurd you just want to laugh them off.

Now ask yourself why they're absurd.

* Is it because it seems completely horrible and screwed-up to deny people access to a social institution based on broad, weak demographic correlations?

* Is it because you think the idea of denying a short person marriage simply because their children might have a higher-than-average chance of being teased, seems to cheapen the lives and love of both the couple, and the children?

* Is it because you realize that, even when it comes to sub-optimal situations (like poverty), denying the stability of the marital institution probably makes things worse?

* If it's not those things, what is it?

Now, does a single one of those absurdities not apply to your opposition to same-sex marriage?  As far as I can tell, they all apply.  If anything, your opposition to same-sex marriage makes less sense.  It makes less sense because the literature doesn't even show inferior outcomes for children of same-sex couples.  It makes sense because incentivizing stability in gay couples is at least as important as doing so with heterosexual couples.  It makes less sense because same-sex parents are much likelier to adopt, and adoption is probably one of the best ways of preventing terrible outcomes for children.  Seriously, dude, do you really think this makes any sense?

I'm rarely this dismissive toward positions, but this argument against same-sex marriage is common, but really, really paper-thin.  I believe you think of this argument as moderate and tolerant.  But it's not.  When you think about it critically, it makes no sense at all.  Please spend less time bothering with defensiveness -- people are jerks, but whatever -- and reconsider this position.  You're a smart guy, and you must realize that a lot of what you're arguing doesn't really hold up.

* - Not a surprise, since same-sex couples actually have to want to have a child.  Plenty of heterosexual couples have them accidentally, producing sub-optimal outcomes all the time.    This is another reason why your argument

[Alcon]

The whole bit about that children need parents of both genders to raise them makes little sense. Even if you believe that, it has little to do with the issue.

Let's imagine a bisexual woman who gets pregnant from a man, gives birth to a baby, and then later seperates from the father. She later gets with a lesbian, and they raise her son or daughter together. Now in what way does the child benefit from them being denied a marriage?

Right, weird example aside (you do know that convincing conservatives probably should involve using less weird examples? ), you're right.  How many situations fall into one of these two categories?

1. The marriage incentive alone is enough to push someone to decide to have a child.

Or,

2. A child is better-off living with a family where the marriage incentive is absent, than where it is present.

I imagine that #1 is really, really rare.  Prohibiting gay marriage probably results in gay people feeling crappier about themselves, which may result in fewer long-term gay relationships and a little less child-rearing.  The idea that this is an aggregate good is just absurd and mean-spirited.  You basically have to make people feel bad and rejected enough to discourage them from raising kids...I mean, wtf?

Obviously, the idea that gay people will choose heterosexual relationships instead, and those will have better outcomes, is so ridiculous I don't even need to address it.

I think, if you believe that marriage is a useful incentive, #2 almost never happens, at least compared to the opposite of #2.  Codified financial and social stability rarely worsens outcome.

The whole "we should only incentivize the best situations" argument is so ridiculous.  The best situations don't benefit from, or require, incentives.  Moreover, if government policy can improve outcomes, without negating that by creating new sub-optimal outcomes, it should.

And that's even setting aside the fact that kids adopted/raised by gay parents don't even have below-average outcomes.

And it's putting aside the fact that prohibiting gay marriage is ridiculously mean-spirited, and we have never ever ever demanded 10% of the scrutiny of heterosexuals that we demand of gays.

Am I beating a dead horse at this point?

[Alcon]

I wanted an example that was completely seperated from the issues of gay adoption and surrogacy as well. But I don't see how it's weird, you should know that gay couples where one has a biological child are not tha uncommon. In fact I know of a lesbian couple with a son from Ingress who are the exact scenario I said above (even though I wasn't thinking of them at the time.)

I was just playing.  I meant that conservatives would probably be put off by an example involving an out-of-wedlock birth to a sexually active bisexual.  That, plus the cartoon you posted earlier, probably would weird out the average swing voter on this issue

[Alcon]

I agree it's dumb, but hey that's swing voters.  They're the worst!