Left2Right Comments

DJV,

Wow, I find your reasons for not supporting same-sex marriage somewhat convincing. I am not sure if I am convinced (I will have to think about it more), but I can see how your position is motivated.
If one thinks that an offsprings right to know its biological parents trumps, or is even equal to, the contested righs of a same-sex couple to wed, then one cannot support the latter. And one can see why this might be the case: who does it seem, is getting worse treatment, the offspring that does not know the parent, or a couple who is fighting for something that is (almost) purely symbolic (of course the right to the legal benefits, are important as hell, but one could have these without calling it 'marriage').
 

Consider the class of infertile heterosexual couples. "As a class", just like gay marriage, such marriage "would be, by its very nature, marriage that can lead only to qualified parenthood -- qualified, that is, by the legally recognized parenthood of donors or birth parents."

David, do your arguments against supporting gay marriage apply equally to such marriages? It seems to me that the only conceivably relevant differences are (i) the practical/epistemic one that it's difficult or a bother to determine infertility, and (ii) the historical one that such marriage has traditionally been permitted. If we imagine these differences away (there are easy tests for fertility and both gay and infertile marriage has always been legal), would you favor eliminating both sorts of marriage (at least until you see specific proposals for protecting the children's rights you discuss)? It seems to me that it would be outrageous to hold that the infertile should not be able to marry, whether or not we can find a neat way to manage the interests children may have in knowing their biological parents (interests whose depth, weight, and specialness I think you overestimate anyway).

I'll bet the farm against your empirical hypothesis that gays-in-general would prefer the status quo to the bundle of the legality of gay marriage and mandatory openness about donor identity.
 

Official government documents' ommitting biological parents is, of course, compatible with protecting the rights of children to find out the names of their biological parents. This is not especially interesting.

What's more so are questions about what the right to know of your biological parent means in practice. A considerable part of it ultimately comes down to what people ought want to know about someone who they didn't know (up to now, whenever that is) but who (science tells them) has nonetheless influenced who they are in various (perhaps inscrutible) ways. Ultimately, the question is no smaller than how exactly we want to and can feasibly make available scrutiny of these ways of influence.

The weightier practical issues surround what contact a biological child can justifiably demand of a biological parent. Suppose I had a child that never met me or couldn't remember it. There are big differences in what relationship with me could be guaranteed him based on (a) an entitlement to know my name, (b) an entitlement to be cared for by me, etc. And (possible) legally cognizable entitlements can't even begin to control the multiplicity of possible relationships there.

I think that the discussion of what children have the right to know reaches (1) issues in bioethics and public administration and (2) issues about the equitable obligations of parents and their enforcability long before it reaches slippery slopes from permitting gay marriage.

Eugene Volokh is also exploring (different) slippery slopes from gay marriage on his blog.
 

I'm frankly baffled by David's post, at least if we take it as an argument against same-sex mariage.

I'm happy to grant that it is important for children to know about their biological parents (and often beneficial for children to be personally acquainted with their biological parents as well). This doesn't begin to show that social institutions should be designed to minimize the number of children whose legal parents' parenthood is (as David puts it) "qualified ... by the legally recognized parenthood of donors or birth parents".

Anyway, the only way to minimize the instances of "qualified parenthood" would be to have social policies that are less friendly to adoption (if by "adoption" we mean the recognition of someone other than a biological parent as a legal parent). E.g., most states in the USA have very adoption-friendly public policies. There is much less adoption in most European countries, since there are fewer teenage pregancies, abortion is more easily available, overseas adoption is heavily restricted, and the mothers of newborns are rarely actively encouraged to put their children up for adoption.

I fail to see however how there is any tension at all between same-sex marriage and even the most adoption-unfriendly policies that could be imagined. David's reflections on this topic seem to me utterly irrelevant to the issue of same-sex marriage.
 

In essence, the argument is that marriage should remain a heterosexual-only privilege because children have a right (under a UN charter) to know the names of their birth parents.

Here's the rebuttal:
1. Clearly, there is no causal relationship between allowing same-sex couples to web and providing people the names of their birth parents. Governments can, and some already do, provide people with this information.
2. Any argument against what the writer refers to as "affectional marriage" ought to apply to everyone. Once again, this argument is applied solely to gay couples.

Really, how substantively different is "a purely affectional conception of marriage will tend to favor a purely affectional conception of parenthood" from "gay marriage will destroy the family"? This is the same old argument served up without the usual bile.
 

I find this quite unconvincing. The "specific solution" David asks for at the end is quite simple: apply the same standards across the board regarding the rights of children regarding matters like knowledge of the identities of one's biological parents, provisions to contact them, etc.

David's rebuttal to this sort of suggestion is odd: it doesn't fully address his concerns with donor conception because "Like some donor offspring, I am opposed not just to anonymity in donor conception but to the practice of donor conception itself." Well, fine. Then outlaw donor conception across the board for all people--straight couples, single parents, and gay couples. I don't see how this can be turned into an argument for banning same-sex mariages. (I wouldn't support such a ban myself, but that's a different matter.)

David also writes, "Homosexual marriage would be, by its very nature, marriage that can lead only to qualified parenthood -- qualified, that is, by the legally recognized parenthood of donors or birth parents. Maybe same-sex couples would be willing to accept a form of marriage that is second-class in this respect -- but I doubt it." I find this rather puzzling. I think that as long as the same standards regarding e.g., the rights of adoptees were applied to adoptees in both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, same-sex marriages wouldn't be second-class. Also, in what way would the *legal* parenthood of adoptive parents be qualified, exactly? Requiring that e.g., adoptees be told of their biological parents' identities, or be given a chance to contact them, in no way diminishes or qualifies the legal rights and responsibilities of adoptive parents.
 

Adopted children certainly have the moral right to know the identities of their natural parents. Their right to this knowledge includes the necessity of having information critical to family medical history. As such, this right can be partially satisfied by their adoptive parents having ready access to this information until the child's age of majority. Fudging these details on a birth certificate seems to be not only silly, but dangerous.

However, more important than the moral right to this information is the right of a child to have the law protect fully the status of her functioning parents (you know, the ones who feed her, clothe her, wipe her nose, and care for her). While the emotional weight of self-knowledge with respect to one's blood lineage is no trivial matter, it is a more critical right by far for a child to be assured that the death of one parent will not result in her separation from the surviving parent. Or that one parent may attend to a child in the hospital if the other is unavailable. Or that the child receive next of kin benefits.

Prof. Velleman's arguement against gay marriage, like all the others I've seen, rests completely on putting vague (and debatable) notions of normality ahead of real, tangible social need.
 

Apologies to David for the multiple trackbacks on the main page. Not sure what happened there. I promise I won't be too upset if you delete them.
 

Two glaring prolems with Velleman's argument-

"Every human child has a mother and a father. And every child has a right to know its mother and father, and to be reared by them."

Velleman presents some persuasive arguments and examples illustrative of why every child has a right to know its mother and father, but where can one derive the right to be reared by them? Yes, one can argue in the abstract that a parent has a moral responsibility to his or her child, but what would happen if there were no mechanism by which parents might abdicate their parental rights and responsibilities? The instance of abortion, abandonment, and infanticide would escalate exponentially. The UK law to which Velleman alludes acknowledges this brute social reality- a child must only be given knowledge of his parents at 18, precluding any "right to be reared" by his or her biological parents. Profound social need will always keep strong safeguards in place to protect the rights of non-biological parents, their parenthood can only be deemed "second class" as a matter of perception.

"Homosexual marriage would be, by its very nature, marriage that can lead only to qualified parenthood -- qualified, that is, by the legally recognized parenthood of donors or birth parents."

This is a piece of logical sleight of hand. All of Velleman's arguments for the necessity of open adoption and non-anomymous donorship center on the rights of the CHILD, not the parent. The "parenthood" of birth parents and donors is only "legally recognized" in that the state has come around to acknowledging the rights of children to know their birth parents, this in no way impinges upon the rights and status of parents by adoption or surrogacy. Velleman's argument seems to be that same-sex marriage must be opposed because it will create a constituency opposed to a child's "right to know," but this is predicated on the fallacious premises that a)same-sex couples will be of one-mind on issues of parenthood; b)the number of same-sex couples opposed to the "right to know" will exceed the number of infertile heterosexual couples that act likewise.

Same-sex marriages are no more affectual than infertile heterosexual marriages, and none of the actions same-sex couples might take to become parents pose any greater threat to the "concept of parenthood" than those that might be taken by infertile heterosexual couples. Velleman's argument amounts to a kind of pseudo-logical alchemy, he attempts to make the case for a child's right to know its parents into a case against the validity of same-sex marriage, but there simply is no "there" there.
 

I agree with most of the criticisms of Vellman's arguments. He conflates marriage with child rearing, he seems to create a special problem for same-sex adoption (donation) that is true of all adoptions (donations), and he over estimates the degreee to which those things really are problems.
I think there are yet other problems with Vellman's argument.

1. Accuracy of Birth Certificates are not guaranteed. I put my name on two of them, but I never even asked my wife if they were 'really' mine. Think of all the multi-racial children of the past century (any now) who were given fictitous parent names to protect all involved parties. So, unless we impose stricter scrutiny on birth certificates, I doubt there would be any benefit to children from this prohibition.

2. What of rape victims or single parents by choice (perhaps those that have been abused by the 'donor'). Would they be forced to surrender parental rights to the biological parents? Would they be force to marry them? There might be some benefits gained from passing on health data to the child, but it might also stigmatize children as being tainted by that information.

3. Casting marriage laws in terms of children's rights seems a dubious enterprise. What about children from mutuple marriages? Would this impact divorce law? Could parents be forced to marry if they didn't want to?

I don't really think that the government ought to involve itself in the marriage business at all. Though married myself, I think that my relationship with my wife is my business. As to benefits and responsibilities, these seem to be something that any qualified adults should able to work out among themselves be they same-sex, polyamorous, or otherwise (someone might interpret Biblical texts as requiring a brother to take in his sister-in-law to his family, after the death of her husband, that sort of thing could be worked out with some sort of contract). Just laws should apply to everyone equally.
 

I think we should let real parents put their names on the birth certificates etc. and revise those as need be. This is what will count for all of the official stuff.

But, if we want to protect the rights of children to know who their biological parents are, then we should make a well-known registry about that.

This way, we're not subjecting anybody to genetic discrimination, but we can let them find out whatever they want for personal purposes.

Then i guess we've got to protect the rights of people not to show their biological heritage to anybody and protect against discrimination against those who do refuse.

Then everybody can know the care parents of anybody. But it will be in everybody's discretion to whom they want to reveal their biological parents.
 

real parents = care parents for the purposes of that last post. I realize I'm oversimplifiying and that there are administrative difficulties. But i think its doable.
 

I actually think that my proposed policy WOULD help create a desirable norm against looking into peoples' biological info.
 

I don't plan to read or comment on this blog regularly, but these comments are especially poor. Here are some brief responses.

1. I didn't say that I oppose same-sex marriage; I said that I can't support it ("can't" indicating that I would like to).

2. Ralph's remarks about adoption are off-target. Read my paper "Family History", or my earlier posts on the topic, which clearly explain why donor conception and adoption are morally different. Adoption occurs when existing children have other interests that outweigh their interest in being reared by their biological parents. Donor conception creates new children with the express intention that they not be raised by their biological parents. The alternative to adoption would be worse for adoptees; the alternative to donor conception would not be worse for donor offspring, since it would be nonexistence.

3. I didn't say that same-sex marriage would necessarily go hand-in-hand with the violation of children's rights. I quoted a gay-marriage advocate who argued for precisely that connection. And I suggested that I would support same-sex marriage if were configured so as to break that connection. If a purely affectional conception of marriage can be separated from a purely affectional conception of parenthood, then I can support same-sex marriage. So you can't refute my position by saying that the two conceptions can be separated.

4. If you want a fresh example of the sickness that donor conception encourages, see this item from today's New York Times:

A Dutch reality program in which a woman searches for a potential sperm donor to conceive a child, "I Want Your Child ... and Nothing Else," is to air on Talpa, a new television station owned by John de Mol, the billionaire producer of "Big Brother," Reuters reported. The 30-year-old woman, called only Yessica, told De Telegraaf newspaper, "The plan is that we visit potential donors and - of course on camera - decide which man is more suitable." Then, she said, there would be artificial insemination

"I Want Your Child -- And Nothing Else" says the title of this program. But what does the child want? If you think that this item is irrelevant to the topic of same-sex marriage, I will be happy to find you quotations from lesbian couples who say that the biological father of their children is "nothing" to them and has no role in their lives. (He's the father of their child! It's the same idea.
 

Thank you for replying. The commenters couldn't see exactly how you take your worries about non-biological parenting to support your reluctance to legalize gay marriage; apparently your reply here is that you have quoted one gay-marriage advocate who agrees with you that there's a connection between gay marriage and something you regard as "the violation of children's rights"? But that quote is about who, given that a child is to be raised by non-biological-parents, is given pride of place on the birth certificate; and this is clearly a red herring, since biological-parent information can be made available to the child without being printed on the birth certificate. The advocate obviously was not addressing the question of the child's right to know the identity of their biological parents, but was arguing for something like marking social respect for rearing-parents (they used the word "stigmatizing") on a certain document.

Anyway, it seems to me that your paper does a good job highlighting regrettable aspects of being an adopted or donor-conceived child, especially one who is prevented from knowing his biological parents. From here there are two moves that I don't like:

First, the inference from "intentionally creating child so as to have feature F, knowing that feature F will disadvantage child" to "doing something wrong" has not been made more plausible by repetition. Not an expert myself, I'd bet the ethics of conception---of whether to create a moral agent and locus of harm and benefit---are a lot more complex than that.

And, second, the move from "gay marriages by their very nature would allow only non-biological parenting (for at least one parent)" and "donor conception is wrong" to ... whatever sort of qualified reluctance you are urging with respect to gay marriage ... still seems a muddle. It would be useful to see this spelled out better. For one thing, you still haven't explained how you see the gay marriage case as differing from the case of heterosexual couples unable or unwilling to have biological children (or whether you find your reasoning for reluctance about the legality of marriage to apply in those cases as well).

Or maybe you don't really have an "argument" here, but something more like a plea that the real drawbacks of non-biological parenting be given appropriate weight as the institutions in the context of which we produce and raise children are reevaluated. That sounds fair enough.

(If reality-show evidence is to be trusted, plain old fertile hetero marriage "encourages" plenty of sickness already!)
 

From "Family History" it looks like there is a single argument--that which concerns identity formation-- that is supposed to establish:(1) what is at issue in the affectional conception of marriage is a "new ideology of the family" rather than a plausible alternative conception for which one might argue;(2)that those who are in search of the donors who made possible their birth are not themselves in the grip of the old ideology of the family, but merely doing what "commonsense" dictates; and (3) that the felt importance of biological connection to some is not itself a product of the old ideology of the family on which biological connection was of unquestionable importance (it's being unquestionable being one part of what qualified that as an ideology).
That seems to me a great deal for a single argument to bear, particularly given that the paper is so strongly worded at moments that it is honestly not clear to me that there is anything Professor Velleman would countenance as a refutation, or a genuine difficulty for his view, rather than the mere expression of "denial" or "the new ideology of the family."
I have two questions and two comments in this light.
1) The heart of the argument seems to be that awareness of biological connections to one's ancestor's is ineliminably crucial to identity-formation. It might be, instead, a common feature of identity formation because there are enormous social forces that make that the case, but where the social forces (a) do not express anything inherent in the human psyche; (b)are social forces the elimination of which might even be good (e.g. if they are sexist).
My first question is this: what *could* qualify on your view as adequate demonstration that the latter, and not the former, is the case? Millions of adoptees who *never* go searching for those to whom they are genetically related? But that we have. A society in which there are many adoptees/children whose birth was made possible by donors of sperm and/or egg, and in which none of those persons feel their identity in any way negatively impacted? Surely that is too strong a requirement for adequate refutation of the thesis, for there are far too many plausible alternative explanations for why some--many-- might erroneously believe that their sense of themselves would be better if they only knew/were raised by their genetic donors. The fantasy of "my life would have been better if only..." is all too easy to fall into, particularly if it is socially reinforced, no matter how dubious the social structures that do the reinforcing. Really-- what possible world or argument *would* you qualify as a refutation?
2) I wonder if you have thought in this light about the process of identity formation that gay men and lesbians go through as they grow up. Here the relevant people who are "like" oneself are almost never biological connections. And the very "imaginative speculations" of which you speak engaging in with regard to your own biological ancestry are the sort that young gay men and lesbians engage in with people other than their biological relations as they grow up. E.g.: thinking to oneself 'I have never been courageous enough to do what he/she did in standing up to those awful bigots. But maybe I have that in me.' (One needn't, I hasten to add, have anything remotely in mind like that same-sex attraction is congenital to have such a thought and have it be deeply important to one's identity formation. Rather, the thought can simply be that this other (usually older) gay man or lesbian is "like" one in that regard, and hope with the same speculative force you describe your own imaginative speculations that time and experience of being 'out' will bring out that degree of courage in oneself. OF COURSE, none of this demonstrates that genetic connections are even typically irrelevant in the identity formation of gay men and lesbians. What it does suggest is that, contrary to what you seem to want to claim, one *can* engage--successfully, for all their worth--in such imaginative speculations about how one is or might be "like" another or a group of other people, in a way that is crucial to one's identity formation, without either being genetically connected to that other person(s), or entertaining the slightest fanstasy of genetic similarity.

Now the two commments (most of this has admittedly been commentary, though the questions are sincerely posed).

1) In assimilating the situation of gay men and lesbians to heterosexual couples who are unwilling or unable to be in a position such that the woman could give birth to a child genetically related to both parents, I think you gloss over a crucial difference, namely, it is very difficult for same-sex couples as such to adopt, and these days, even those who live in states where it is legally possible for them to adopt run a non-neglible risk that the child will later be removed from their custody because they are a same-sex couple and for no other reason. [Consider the recent Maryland case] Heterosexual couples also run a risk that the adoption will fall through, or that the genetic connections will change their minds, etc. But their risk, high as it may be, is nothing like the risk same-sex couples face. Perhaps then, if you remain convinced of the ineliminable significance of genetic connections, you ought to argue (instead or in addition to arguing that this is why you 'can't support same-sex marriage') that this is a reason in favor of same-sex adoptions, which would benefit the children in question and which alternative-- if made as available to gay men and lesbians as it is to heterosexual couples-- would reduce the number of gay men and lesbians who rely on donor sperm or eggs in their pursuit of a desire to raise a child.

2)It seems to me that the very assumptions about the significance of biological connections that you make are also what is driving the entire sperm/egg donor industry in the first place. There is hardly a shortage of children in need of adoption, particularly not for the well-heeled heterosexual couples who can avail themselves of so-called "infertility treatments." They choose, instead, to obtain donor egg and/or sperm (usually one but not the other) because they are so deeply convinced of the "natural" significance of biological connections that they cannot imagine lovingly raising a child to whom they are not genetically connected, or because their preference to raise a child to whom they are genetically connected is so very strong that they are willing to put themselves through incredible expense and a series of medical procedures rather than go immediately down the path of adoption. [You could simply say here that such people are inconsistent in their own beliefs--if they really believe that genetic connection is that important, then they ought to also conclude that it is wrong of them to pursue child-rearing through donation of sperm or eggs. But then, I would simply retort that this suggests more than mere inconsistency--it suggests that such people are still in the grip of the old ideology of the family; the stubborn inconsistency being one (albeit not in itself sufficient) piece of evidence that they are in the grips of an ideology.]
 

p-bs-watcher:

Your comments have not been deleted. They must have failed to post. Please try again.
 

The Quebec child advocate places way too much emphasis on the birth certificate. Describing a birth certificate as to a child what a constitution is to a country is pure hyperbole. Nothing about possessing a birth certificate with one's father's name on it can improve the situation where the father is absent (and in a hetero marriage the care father/birth certificate father may not be the biological one).
 

First to the author of the article, thanks for such a well written piece. I think I see in it a very simply thread that cuts through much of Goodridge.

I am responsible for the pingbacks to the Opine Editorials. It was a question of whether or not it was working that prompted my multiple entries. I appologize and hope that you can delete all but one of them (any one I don't care).

These comments on this thread are very intriguing. I'd like the opportunity to answer all of them with my thoughts, I hope I do not intrude.

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Brendan: And one can see why this might be the case: who does it seem, is getting worse treatment, the offspring that does not know the parent, or a couple who is fighting for something that is (almost) purely symbolic (of course the right to the legal benefits, are important as hell, but one could have these without calling it 'marriage').

Well put. More on this as I unravel the other comments as well...

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dobble: Consider the class of infertile heterosexual couples. "As a class", just like gay marriage, such marriage "would be, by its very nature, marriage that can lead only to qualified parenthood -- qualified, that is, by the legally recognized parenthood of donors or birth parents."

I think the key here is one of equalization vs equal protection. Equalization is an active social grant of resources to assist one to have the same opportunity as another. Equal protection is passive, it removes restraints that are geared towards particular classes of people.

The state rarely endeavors in equalization, but in a few instances it does. In our society we find restoring people the capacities robbed by physical disability to be a noble practice. We employ the state in such capacity through Social Security, Medicare, etc... To be a class of people worthy of equal protection is one thing, but to be worthy of equalization is another.

Now, lets look at homosexuality. Is marriage restoring some capacity that they cannot obtain through their own resource? In general no. Brendan points out well that the legal benefits are obtainable through other means than marriage, and that the move is purely symbolic.

Now you can answer this one for yourself, are the measures you mention restoring a capacity that your specified class naturally be albe to do, but cannot without the external resources?

In the end, I believe you will find, homosexuality is not a handicap. To try to submit homosexuals in to marriage by equating them with the handicapped is (I think) the very inequality that J. David mentions would not likely be put up with.

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Anonymous: Official government documents' ommitting biological parents is, of course, compatible with protecting the rights of children to find out the names of their biological parents. This is not especially interesting.

What's more so are questions about what the right to know of your biological parent means in practice

Thank you for sharing what you find interesting and not interesting. However I'd rather look at things measured by their salience and relevance. As it is, children have a right to know who their bio-parents are for many reasons well before we contemplate the resultant obligations consider more interesting. And that is salient to the discussion as pointed out by J. David independant of where you'd rather find interesting discussion.

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Ralph: I fail to see however how there is any tension at all between same-sex marriage and even the most adoption-unfriendly policies that could be imagined.

Pardon me, but it is a bit difficult to discern your point in general for that post. I am going to work on an assumption that you do not see how same-sex marriage relates to the procedural demands of parenting?

If I have David's point right, it may not really be about limiting qualified parenting, but noting that the government cannot truely provide the equality they seek without trampling on the rights of others (in this case children's rights). Or maybe that it cannot be equalized at all.

I wish that David were not correct in that, but looking at Massachusettes we see that the argument in Goodridge that procreation has nothing to do with marriage was a ruse. Now, as married couples, they are taking to re-defining parenting to "equalize" themselves with heterosexual couples in procreative capacity. But that is a legal fiction. If I have J. David's point right, a legal fiction that when adapted to (as you suggest should be perfectly okay) will simply leave them decrying inequality once more.

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Ian:

1) See my reply to Ralph above
2) The argument sounds like it is against applying affectional marriage to everyone. You may want to read that again, or maybe I need to be corrected.

This is the same old argument served up without the usual bile.

Actually I've been in this debate for many years now, and it was the first time I've seen it so related. Truely marriage and parenting are linked, though much of the movement for same-sex "marriage" has been arguing the contrary. The case in Massachusettes points this out strongly.

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I'll pick up on this tomorrow with more replies to these interesting posts.
 

Alright I'm back and ready for more. These have been very interesting and fun to reply to.

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Tim: The "specific solution" David asks for at the end is quite simple: apply the same standards across the board regarding the rights of children regarding matters like knowledge of the identities of one's biological parents, provisions to contact them, etc.

I'm just reading David as well as you. I have no extrordinary insight, but it seems to me that David is asking for the rights of children to be applied equally across the board. His question seems to be whether or not SS"m" advocates would accept such a status. I'll add that even if homosexuals accept a fate of qualified parenting, I question whether or not society accepts homosexuality as a handicap requiring such resourses for equalization as infertility is.

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Pickabone: As such, this right can be partially satisfied by their adoptive parents having ready access to this information until the child's age of majority. Fudging these details on a birth certificate seems to be not only silly, but dangerous.

I, for one, couldn't agree more.

Prof. Velleman's arguement against gay marriage, like all the others I've seen, rests completely on putting vague (and debatable) notions of normality ahead of real, tangible social need.

Unfortunately if they were vague and debatable (or even relying on normative metrics) one would not be any closer to knowing that from reading your post. Could you elaborate on what you found "vague" or "normative"?

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Simon: I'm not familiar with standards in ethical theory, but the idea that a group of existing people should be denied a basic right simply because of something that may or may not happen sometime in the indeterminite future strikes me as strange, to say the least.

As Brendan pointed out above of those you you describe as being denied a basic right is "a couple who is fighting for something that is (almost) purely symbolic (of course the right to the legal benefits, are important as hell, but one could have these without calling it 'marriage')". He compares it to the needs of the children.

As pointed out subsiquently by David, this isn't a hypothetical future question. Though it is a question of basic human rights, that of the child. As I pointed out in my last post, there is a very intrinsic question here of equal protection (which David is asking to be applied to children) and equalization which as dooble points out the SS"m" advocates are asking to be applied to homosexuals as well as the infertile.

Equalization is not a basic human right.

Should this argument have really been about "marriage" being seperated from procreation as the Justices who decided Goodridge v Public health implied, then you would probably be right. But what is happening instead is that procreation (i.e. parenting) is taking on the same debasement as marriage (which David puts rather eloquently in his statement about "affectional" marriage and parenting.)

And, as a friend pointed out, another gaping hole in Velleman's argument against gay marriage exists: it suggests, among other things, that gay adoptees care (or should care) more for knowing their heredity than they should for having an equal social status throughout the other parts of their life. This seems bizarre to me.

Elizabeth Marquadt noted that, "In fact, it's because of all the years I've spent on the divorce question that I can't stop noticing how the children of SS couples debate is reproducing that earlier debate. The message [in] both cases is: adults are vulnerable, children are resilient. Society is supposed to protect vulnerable adults and the children will be fine. I can't live with a society like that."

She seems to be noting the same thing you are, but you are approaching it as a feature of the legal fiction of same-sex marriage, and Elizabeth is noting it is a flaw.

I will say, however, that I read the article on family matters he mentioned and I found it quite challenging and somewhat persuasive -- as to the question of IVF, if not gay marriage.

Here, I would agree with you fully.

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Madman: Two glaring prolems with Velleman's argument-

I'd say your first "glaring problem" looks an awful lot like agreement with David.

The second problem, "All of Velleman's arguments for the necessity of open adoption and non-anomymous donorship center on the rights of the CHILD, not the parent" is addressed by Brendan, and in my comment above to Simon. I am in the camp that the needs of the child outweigh the needs of the parent as the child is the innocent one in the situation.

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Sholz: He conflates marriage with child rearing

When I read it, I saw complaint that SS"m" couples were so gung-ho on conflating marriage with child-rearing that they were stepping on childrens rights. While I know a number of who wonder why their community is expending such effort to pretending they are heterosexual (minus the sex of the other partner), the fact is they are. Even to the stepping on of rights of children in the cases that David points out.

To take your points in order...

1) We can all agree that innaccuracy in birth certificates is denying a child their right to know their biological lineage. In days of yore that lineage could denote property rights, inheritance, etc... Today we know of many diseases that are hereditary that requires people to search out their ancestry. A child is put at risk should such a disposition to disease be hidden from them by either carelessness or (in the case of Mass) outright selfishness.

There are a stream of other benefits that come from knowing your ancestry as (though the most dramatic) diseases are not the only dispositions inherited. People who study their biological ancestry find out much about themselves as they learn about their parents, and such a pursuit should be theirs to take, not ours to take away.

2) The third post in this thread meantions somewhat the same "interesting" food for thought. However I can glean enough from his comment to deduce that while a basic human right to know parentage is safe in all situations that other wishes for children can be taken in a case by case basis. And it can be a very interesting question.

3) Please reference my responses to the above two posters. You also see a feature in what others see as a flaw.

In your final paragraph you exemplify a phenomenon that I've seen in so many other cases. When marriage is reduced to simply being a romantic enterprise (I could have used the word 'interest' but enterprise suits me better here) then one wonders why the government should be interested in it. When one looks at the marriage participants it is hard to see a reason the government should be involved. But when one sees it from the child's perspective, as a citizen who is in need of representation and support, then the purpose of the government recognizing marriage becomes clear.

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Anonymous: I think we should let real parents put their names on the birth certificates etc. and revise those as need be. This is what will count for all of the official stuff.

I'm opposed to this as it turns a birth certificate into a sort of ownership certificate. And that debases what children are. A SS"m" advocate recently described the procreative capacity of same-sex couples as on of being able to commission a work like a piece of art. Legally the relationship between donor, surrogate and patrons are drawn up along the lines of a commersial commissioning.

I hesitate to consider children as a commercial product. And as it requires someone to deny their ties to the child, I see it as tantamount to an unwanted baby industry who's sole purpose is to meet the needs of those that want babies. Again, I don't see children's best interests being served under such enterprise.

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David,

Again thanks for the article. I see I was probably right about some of the assumptions I made about your article. I may still be wrong, but I appreciate you posting.

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I'm going to cut it off here as Anonymous's comments at this point are simply attempts to margionalize and demeand and do not need to be responded to as they incriminate the writer far better than I can.

_________________

Thanks everyone, it was a blast.
 

Oh I'll just add that I probably won't come back here to check so if you have something you feel I didn't reply to, if you feel you have some dead ringer piece of evidence that I'm avoiding I'd appreciate if you brought it to my attention.

I've cross posted David's essay over at my own site for my readership's benefit. You can always contact me (as the trackback points) there.
 

Doobie> It seems to me that the only conceivably relevant differences are (i) the practical/epistemic one that it's difficult or a bother to determine infertility, and (ii) the historical one that such marriage has traditionally been permitted.
The difference SHOULD be that the male-female couple has the right, if not the ability, to have children together. Whether they do or not is not predictable, but they are not prohibited from procreating together, the way siblings are, or couples where one is married to someone else, or where one or both are children. Those couples are prohibited from marrying, and they are prohibited from having sex (or, presumably, also from supplying the pair of gametes used to concieve a child.)
Currently, same-sex couples are NOT prohibited from procreating together, if anyone wanted to do this, they would not find a law in their way. And they would probably find a Dr. Zavos or a Clonaid who would want to be the first doctor to create a child for a gay couple that didn't have any of these donor conception issues. But it is terribly unethical, both for reasons of risks to the child, and in terms of how it would affect our society to start forcing people into existence like that. We need to ban it, by passing an egg and sperm law. Once that is done, then the same-sex couple will not have a right to have children together, just like the other relations that are excluded from marriage.
 

Oh, and that chain of events would go a long way to reminding people that marriage grants procreation rights, that you aren't actually allowed to have children with someone you aren't married to. It is a thing you aren't supposed to do to someone. Not to the kid, not to the woman (if you're the man), and not to the man (if you're the woman). This would help with stopping donor conception too.
 

The connection DJV draws between his opposition to egg & sperm donation and his opposition to gay marriage doesn't make any sense.

He's against donor conception, regardless of the sex of the parents -- so why not make it illegal for everyone, gay and straight alike? He does not seem to be against gay couples' adoption of existing children, so it's unclear why he would want those children to be adopted by an unmarried gay couple rather than a married one. Creating legal gay marriage, while making conception from donated egg or sperm illegal for gay and hetero couples alike, would eliminate DV's issue.

And the focus on birth certificates is just odd. It would not be hard to redesign birth certificates to add a couple of lines -- genetic mother, genetic father, legal parent A, legal parent B. In traditional families, each parent's name would appear both in the genetic parent and legal parent categories. If you don't have other political, moral, or religious reasons for keeping the truth off of the birth certificate, there's no good reason not to make the above change -- even if gay marriage is never made legal -- given that sperm & egg donation is already a reality today.
 

The presumption is there's something creepy about changing mother and father to Parents A and B. I don't see what's creepy about that. If that becomes the law of the land, I have no problem changing the birth certificate of my wife's and I child to list us as Parent A and Parent B.

Regarding the right to know ones birth parents, sure why not? Same sex parenting becomes simply a special case of adoption. Same rules apply.

There are certainly genuinely unique and serious issues and they have to do with custody of the child in the case of a divorce. Many that we can imagine are fiendlishly complex and there are others that we can't imagine. And there is only one way to resolve any of these, and that's in courts of law.

It is truly amazing how terrified some are of two people openly declaring their love and sexual attraction for each other.