The Dumbest Argument Against The Marriage Amendment Ever

As I’ve said before, I’m ambivalent about the Marriage Amendment.  I’m still not entirely sure how I’m going to vote on it.

But I did encounter the least convincing argument against the amendment of all the other day:

[Any amendment supporter] is teh heppocreet!  They are teh divorced!  How can they limit marriage for others when they don’t take their own vows seeriously?  That is sucks!

This argument drips stupidity on almost too many levels to count.  But I’ve built a bit of an unremunerated career cataloging stupidity that drips; it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

  1. Divorce is an awful thing – but sometimes it happens for a reason.  Even the Bible allows a couple of grounds for divorce – cheating, and being abandoned by a non-believing spouse.  I said “allows”, as opposed to “encourages”. Society has added a few more; people are only expected to give so much leeway to addicts, abusers and the like.
  2. By the way, that “hypocrite” argument only stands up if one assumes gays will have a divorce rate of zero.
  3. The fact that one has been divorced – leaving the cause aside (see 1, above) – doesn’t mean the person doesn’t believe in traditional marriage, or plan to make sure their next attempt is one.
  4. If you’ve been out drinking, and have had about six too many, and are about to head out to your car to drive home, and a friend whom you know to have had a DUI 10 years ago says “give me your keys, I’ll give you a ride home”, do you say “You are teh hipocreet!  You had a DUI!  You can’t tell me about teh rules of driving!”?   If you’re not one of those people who says “Divorced people who support the Marriage Amendment are hypocrites”, you’re probably smarter than that.
  5. A key tenet of the Christian belief that animates so many Marriage Amendment supporters (and enrages the opponents) is the idea that we are all imperfect; we all fall short of our ideals.  We are forgiven via God’s grace and the salvation He sent us via His son.  We err.  We sin.  We repent, and try to do better next time.  Christ, we believe, doesn’t tattoo sinners with scarlet letters that follow them the rest of their lives.
  6. If you’re a DFLer – your party supported, and still supports, no-fault divorce.  Careful, your leadership will spank you for being a heretic.

There is a debate to be had about the Marriage Amendment.  The Amendment’s opponents have largely done a terrible job of making that argument.

But this one is the dumbest of all.

38 thoughts on “The Dumbest Argument Against The Marriage Amendment Ever

  1. 7. This undercuts the whole “How will my gay marriage hurt your hetero marriage?” argument.

    I believe that when the social history of the 20th & 21st is written by our descendants, it will be seen as the victory of the elites over the common man. Elites as defined here are people with any LA degree from an ivy league university.or any LA graduate degree from any university.
    They wanted to remove the stigma of divorce because the idea of lifetime marriage constrained them. They wanted to remove the stigma from homosexuality because it constrained them. They wanted to remove the stigma of drug use because it constrained them. They wanted women in the workforce because it allowed them to leverage their social power.
    These social reforms have been harmful to the non-elites. As a social class their power is a fraction of what it was a half-century ago. The elites — almost all political liberals — have gained power at the expense of the non-elites.
    In Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell wrote that revolutions don’t come from society’s lower classes because the down-trodden can’t imagine themselves working the machinery of the State. Revolutions come instead from the bourgeois because the privilege and education of the bourgeois gives them the imagination to see just what must be done to destroy the old order and put themselves in control. That is as true now as it was back in 1948.

  2. Marriage today has problems, so we must change the definition to include homosexual marriages.
    That makes about as much sense as the those who say we need to legalize hard drugs because we alcohol causes so many problems today.

  3. Mitch, how do you feel about judges making law from the bench? Because right now, there’s a case against Minnesota’s current law defining marriage working its way through the legal system. If this amendment fails to pass this year, expect gay marriage to be enacted by judicial fiat (just like every other state that has enacted it) next year. If anything, vote for the amendment to prevent that and support the people of the state having a voice on the issue over one or a few more judges.

  4. I still say the stupidest argument against the amendment is that it “bans gay marriage” when in fact, if it passes, NOTHING CHANGES for gay couples. Except, perhaps, their ability to get the court to impose it on everybody.

  5. Mitch, This is my argument:

    In a recent letter to the editor of the Winona daily News, the suthor sees marriage as a license to procreate. I see marriage as much more. Our society has granted many legal rights to the relationship represented by contractual marriage. Some are related to procreation – or at least having children – but most are not.

    The civil contract, which we call “marriage,” represents a commitment that two people make to “live as one.” The legal favors and rights granted to people who have become married are based upon that concept. Nowhere in the civil marriage contract is there a requirement to procreate. That requirement — which can even be waived under certain extenuating circumstances by churches like the Catholic Church — is imposed by religion — not by the state of Minnesota.

    The author also asserts that because marriage is not a right, it can be controlled and limited by the state. The author is correct. It can. But all such controls and limitations are rightfully carried out by laws, not by changes to our founding documents. The state’s constitution does not prevent blind people from obtaining a driver’s license. State laws and regulations do.

    The state’s interest in licensing marriage contracts is already quite different from those of the Catholic Church. As a practicing Catholic myself, it is obvious to me that the church wants to impose many of the same rules on society at large that it imposes on those wishing to receive the Sacrament of Matrimony. While it is free to attempt to do so by influencing legislative action affecting state laws and statutes, we cannot allow the church to rewrite the state’s constitution.

    We simply must not allow that to happen. I urge everyone regardless of their individual opinions on the issue of same-sex marriage to vote “NO” on this amendment. The constitution is not where such prohibitions should be rooted

  6. My references to the catholic Church were in responce to the letter to the editor. Much the same applies to extreme conservative elements in our society.

  7. Leslie, you should talk to “Sanity”. He is convinced that gay marriage is already in the U.S. constitution, under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.
    Changing the judicial interpretation of the founding documents is a liberal specialty. Much easier than getting the 2/3 majority of states you need to amend the constitution, than you need to implement revolutionary change in society, and it then becomes your opponents’ job to struggle at getting the supermajority to amend the constitution. Plus, libs get to claim it is the conservatives, not the liberals, who want to “change” the constitution.
    If you knw as much about the history of marriage as you claim you do, Leslie, you know that marriage was not created by the state. It recognizes marriages, it does not create them.

  8. Terry, it doesn’t make any difference who “created” marriage. The Sacrament of Matrimony – and other religious rituals – are not what is being discussed here. The real question – from my perspective – is whether the constitution or other founding documents is the place to regulate civil marriage by restricting the rights of a class of people. I would assert that answer to be “no” irregardless of one’s personal position on the topic.

  9. Leslie, the problem is that the pro-gay-marriage side wants to embed their will in the MN constitution. I honestly don’t believe that the pro-amendment people are trying to do anything undemocratic here. They just want to make sure that the pro-gay-marriage people don’t impose their will on the majority by judicial fiat.

  10. No amendment should limit rather than protect civil rights.

    There is precisely one reason for allowing same sex marriages to have legal recognition.

    It is because married same sex couples operate for the same social good as heterosexual couples; they provide social stability for property and families. Unlike earlier periods in this country, gay couples live together acting as married couples in owning homes, and raising children, paying taxes, holding jobs, and participating constructively and productively contributing to communities, where before they lived secretly.

    Consistently, studies show (82 of them by one count) that gay parents do exactly as good (or bad) a job as heterosexual couples. Kids have been documented to do better with two same sex parents, and just as well as with two heterosexual parents, whereas kids do worse with one parent, regardless of sexual orientation.

    Giving kids the opportunity to have two PARENTS, by recognizing marriage means they are likely to do better than with an informal arrangement — as is the case with kids living in informal heterosexual parenting arrangements.

    Our world has changed in how these relationships are accepted and have become part of our world. Time to reflect that legally, even if it means that, yes, because we’re all human, there will be divorces of some couples regardless of same sex or heterosexual orientation.

    Same sex marriage hurts no one else’s marriage. Same sex marriage is equivalent, in how we recognize marriage, unless we are not going to allow heterosexual couples to adopt, to use surrogates for in vitro fertilization, or to use semen donors or ova donors when a spouse is infertile, or unless we are going to only allow couples who choose to reproduce to have the option of marriage.
    Otherwise the benefits of giving legal status to people who are fulfilling the same roles as existing married heterosexual couples in the community as partners supporting each other in their lives, owning property together, and being partners who are contributors to the community should be disallowed for everyone; because it is the roles, not the genders, or orientation that determine the relationships.
    Religions may choose to sanctify with religious recognition under different standards; we are not a country, or state, governed by any religion. That should be a separate matter, left up to those who choose to follow the dictums of whatever faith they believe. But their beliefs should not be forced on others, not in this regard or in other areas of civil rights.

    The rest of the arguments are just noise.

  11. Hi Leslie! Haven’t seen you for a while.

    Terry wrote:
    “Leslie, the problem is that the pro-gay-marriage side wants to embed their will in the MN constitution.”

    The pro-gay marriage side has made no proposals of a Constitutional amendment, so that is false.
    What you call ‘their will’ is not being embedded anywhere or imposed on anyone.
    They wish simply to be accorded the civil rights they deserve to marry. That takes nothing away from anyone else, and does not ‘impose’ anything on anyone.
    If your religious beliefs dislike homosexuality, don’t be a homosexual. But your rights and beliefs stop short of what you can order for anyone else, least of all for what is innate. You can no more force someone not to be homosexual than you can force them not to be blue eyed or brown eyed, or tall or short. All of those are silly reasons to deny someone a basic civil right to a legally recognized relationship; so is sexual orientation.
    Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon, is in jail presumably for the rest of his life; HE is allowed to be married, and gets 48 hour conjugal visits. We allow this civil right to criminals…….but not people who are decent, law abiding, parents who have a same-sex orientation?
    I think we need to look at what the reasons are that we have a civil recognition of marriage: they involve property ownership, and a stability to society for people as a couple and sometimes (but not always) as parents.

    If we give that to criminals who have done something seriously wrong, we should give it to people who are providing the same usefulness to our society, without doing those criminal acts.

  12. Leslie and Dog Gone miss the point (or more likely, since SITD has explained it repeatedly, intentionally ignore the point to perpetuate the lie).

    One-man-one-woman marriage is already the law in Minnesota, adopted by the elected representatives of the people. The marriage amendment doesn’t change that, the marriage amendment preserves it.

    Preserves it from what? From lawyers. From gays hoping to change the law, not through the democratic process, but through the court system. They want a judge to impose gay marriage on society because gays know they can’t win in the legislature. It’s exactly the same tactic that the pro-abortion people used.

    Once you understand that, it changes the discussion. This isn’t about the Catholic Church, that’s a red herring to divert your attention. This isn’t about gays being denied a civil right, that right doesn’t exist. This is Roe versus Wade all over again. This is about persuading some judge to find an unenumerated right lurking in an emanation of a penumbra and proclaiming that new discovery overturns a century-and-a-half of democracy.

    This is a fight over trial tactics. The only legal tactic that can over-ride an unenumerated emanation of a penumbra is an explicit constitutional amendment. Only a marriage amendment can stop judges from overturning the will of the people. The amendment isn’t anti-democratic, the opponants are.

  13. Dog Gone does raise one worthwhile point: she questions why society regulates marriage. I agree that’s become a valid question. I disagree that marriage as it exists in Minnesota today has been so watered down and weakened that it no longer has much to do with property ownership and nothing at all to do with stability of relationships.

    If gay marriage becomes the law, civil marriage no longer will have any meaningful purpose so I suggest we simply abolish it. Get married in your church if you want to make a promise before God, but there’s no reason to pay the State of Minnesota $35 for a license to do that.

  14. jaymchue: “If this amendment fails to pass this year, expect gay marriage to be enacted by judicial fiat (just like every other state that has enacted it) next year.”

    Get your facts straight. New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont recognized same-sex marriage by legislative action. And while they are subject to voter referendum, bills also passed in Maryland and Washington state.

    The Minnesota amendment would eliminate the possibility that the state legislature could at some point pass a law recognizing same sex marriage. While amendment proponents seem to regard this as a feature, not a bug, I think they are making a mistake, as the only way to remedy the amendment will be with another amendment. If this amendment passes, same-sex marriage will be in the state constitution within a decade. (Barring, of course, a creative ruling from the surprising Mr. Roberts.)

    The state constitution is a lousy place for legislation. The legacy amendment is one example of this. For all its faults, I think the legislature is the place for legislation.

  15. The Minnesota amendment would eliminate the possibility that the state legislature could at some point pass a law recognizing same sex marriage.
    True, but the legislature could put an amendment on the ballot to recognize same-sex marriage.
    Liberals have never opposed changing the plain meaning of any constitutional clause by judicial fiat when the change suited their ideology. Rowe V Wade, for example. Liberal opposition to the amendment is ideological. Liberals should admit it, and move on.

  16. Terry: “True, but the legislature could put an amendment on the ballot to recognize same-sex marriage.”

    I would go so far as to say that a vote for the current amendment is a vote for a future amendment that will put the recognition of same-sex marriage in the state constitution.

    Be careful what you wish for.

  17. DG makes pitiful arguments not based on FACTS, as usual:

    Terry wrote:
    “Leslie, the problem is that the pro-gay-marriage side wants to embed their will in the MN constitution.”

    The pro-gay marriage side has made no proposals of a Constitutional amendment, so that is false.

    Count 1
    Violation of the Due Process Provision of Article 1, Section 7 of the Minnesota Constitution
    http://www.marrymeminnesota.org/files/Complaint0001.pdf

    Dog Gone thinks that I am against same sex marriage for religious reasons. I have never made an argument against same-sex marriage based on my own or anyone else’s religion.

    Dog Gone also repeats an especially silly strawman “argument”: How does gay marriage hurt my marriage?
    It’s a strawman because I’ve never heard any opponent of same-sex marriage make the argument that their particular marriage would be harmed by same sex marriage. Not saying it never happened, Most arguments against same sex marriage try to make the case that the State has no right to arbitrarily define marriage to suit the public policy goals of faction of its citizens.
    The argument is silly (as well as a strawman) because it compares apples to oranges. A single married couple is not comparable to an abstract notion like “same sex marriage”. This is why the argument falls flat on its face when the same comparison argument is made while varying the first clause.
    How does allowing polygamy hurt my particular marriage? It doesn’t.
    How does forbidding inter racial marriages hurt my particular marriage? It doesn’t.
    How does allowing inestuous marriages hurt my marriage? It doesn’t.
    How does allowing adults to marry children hurt my marriage? It doesn’t.
    And so on, and so on . . .

  18. Peter H wrote:
    I would go so far as to say that a vote for the current amendment is a vote for a future amendment that will put the recognition of same-sex marriage in the state constitution.

    Be careful what you wish for.

    That is surely an improvement over imposition by judicial fiat or imposition by a state legislature.
    I honestly believe that liberals don’t understand what it means to have a republican form of government.
    FYI, I don’t live in Minnesota, though I consider it to be my home state.

  19. Leslie Hittner- “Marriage is not a right, it can be controlled and limited by the state. That is correct. But all such controls and limitations are rightfully carried out by laws, not by changes to our founding documents.” But that’s what voting “yes” would do- it would keep the controls and limitations through laws, not through some judges. And the people of the state, via voting, could change it again with another amendment. But not a judge. So you agree with us?

  20. Terry, if you don’t like the idea of state legislatures legislating, then go ahead and advocate direct democracy, but don’t pretend that it is I who doesn’t understand what it means to have a republican form of government.

    I have long been opposed to this issue being settled by the courts.

  21. Peter H. wrote: “I have long been opposed to this issue being settled by the courts.”

    None of the same-sex marriage opponents on this thread have expressed a will to stymie the state legislature. They have expressed a desire to stop a state judge or judges from inserting a right to same-sex marriage in the constitution via case law. See the link the marrymeminnesota.org above for how this could be done. I believe that marrymeminnesota’s stated desire to recognize the right to same-sex marriage in the MN constitution is accepted as legitimate by the vast majority of same-sex marriage proponents in Minnesota. Am I wrong?
    As for state legislatures —
    In the state I live in (Hawaii) same-sex marriage was approved of by a lame-duck session of the state legislature. The governor, a Republican (Linda Lingle) vetoed the law because (she said) it made a very controversial change in the state’s marriage laws and many of the legislators who voted to change the law were not running for re-election or had lost there re-election bid & so could not be held accountable to the voters. small-r republican principles required that she veto the bill.
    I found her reasoning impeccable.

  22. I need to correct what I wrote about same-sex marriage, the Hawaii state legislature, and Linda Lingle. The law she vetoed was not same-sex marriage, it was domestic partnerships. In Hawaii domestic partnerships are marriage in all but name.
    They were signed into law by Lingle’s successor, Neil Abercrombie.

  23. Terry, I suppose that it would be possible to have written the amendment to block judicial activism but allow for legislation, but that’s not what was done.

    While you are correct that no one on this thread has argued against legislative action that would recognize same-sex marriage, the amendment’s proponents are arguing that this amendment will prevent the legislative action.

    You’ll see it in the first sentence on this page at Minnesota for Marriage: The Threat to Marriage.

  24. The checks and balances built into the American system(s) ensures that social conversations continue, and that ever better solutions can be arrived at as society changes (and it does change). Your so-called “activist” judges make opinions as the result of cases brought to them by the people. Legislators, if they make laws the people don’t like, can be voted out of office. These checks and balances are a strength – not a weakness of our system (Even if some of the electorate doesn’t like the answers.) It’s messy, but it works. Now, when things like same-sex marriage are prohibited by our founding documents, these social conversations are over – or at the very least nearly impossible to re-ignite. When laws are placed into the founding documents then “That’s the way it is!” becomes the answer and there’s no more discussion.

    It’s a darned poor precedent to set no matter what the topic.

  25. Leslie, Peter H.-
    According to Minnpost, since 1858 there have been 213 amendments proposed for the MN constitution. Over half were approved.
    The “darn poor precedent” that Leslie H. describes has happened, on average, every fifteen months since 1858.
    Moreover the process of submitting a proposed amendment to the citizens for a vote is much easier in Minnesota than it is in most states. The legislature votes to put the question before the people by a simple majority. The governor cannot veto it.
    I don’t think that either of you, Peter H. or Leslie H., really has an argument with the amendment process. You both have problems with this particular amendment only.

  26. Terry, I do have a problem with the amendment process being used to pass what should be laws. As I mentioned up thread, I don’t think the legacy amendment was a good idea.

    And my guess is that a lot of Republicans will start screaming about the process next time the Democrats have a majority in the house and senate, and use the amendment process to bypass the Republican governor’s veto.

  27. I believe that the constitution should not be often amended. Too many items have come to the state constitution in my lifetime. Many of them were proposed for the same reason that the one we are discussing has been proposed. I have one other issue with this amendment, however. it limits the rights of a class of people. I believe – and I think this is historically accurate – that our constitutions – starting with the federal one – are intended to GRANT rights to the people and to LIMIT the powers of government. I bnelieve that any amendment that goes against this basic principle is wrong. I will vote against such amendments even if I agreed with the intent of the proposal.

    That’s the bad precedent I am referring to.

  28. When the FDA declares sand is a food group, I’ll believe broke back mountain is a honeymoon story.

  29. Leslie Hittner wrote:
    I believe that the constitution should not be often amended.
    Leslie, you are only concerned about the integrity of the Minnesota constitution when it looks as though the constitution might be amended in a way that you do not approve.
    What do you think happens when a court decides that the Minnesota constitution requires the state to recognize same-sax marriages? Something the courts have so far refused to do?
    If the courts decided that same-sex marriage is actually within the Minnesota constitution, though the people that wrote it would be shocked at the idea, and the majority of Minnesotans are opposed it, you would accept this alternation of the Minnesota constitution without complaint.
    Am I wrong?.

  30. Terry, if what you hypothesize were proposed to be written into the constitution, then you would be wrong. I would oppose it, but probably not for the same reason you might oppose it.

  31. Troy,

    Yep.

    To my knowledge, restricting the people’s rights have been tried once in the federal constitution (Amendment #18 – Prohibition). Just how well did THAT work out?

    I believe the same principle should apply to state constitutions in this country. That’s what is primarily behind my opposition to the marriage amendment.

  32. The 18th was a federal amendment. What is proposed is a change to MN constitution. The MN constitution is seventy years younger than the US constitution and has been amended over hundred times.
    This is because the MN constitution is easier to change than the U.S. constitution. This is by design. The U.S. constitution must be followed (in most cases) by the 50 states, which are self-governing units of government (check federalist 9 & esp. 10).
    Don’t get the vapors, Leslie H.

  33. Terry, When you are my age, “the vapors” will be the least of your worries 😉

    Let’s face it, we have a legitimate diagreement, but I still think my position is a defensible reason for voting the amendment down.

    I have voted against most of the MN constitutional amendments that have come accross my ballots for similar reasons, even when I was not opposed to the position being advocated – if I believed it would be more appropriate in the body of law. Most of the amendments I have seen have been political end-runs around the checks and balances system – which I generally oppose. They have been attempts to stop social conversations, which I believe is not good.

  34. Leslie Hittner:

    Again: nope.

    Rights are recognized in constitutions, not granted. It’s an important distinction and, if you’re going to blather on about “rights”, it’s something you should know. Otherwise you run the risk of sounding stupid.

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