I knew it was going to happen, but...Follow

I am confused by this. I thought your argument was Marriage Laws apply because of Children, Gays can't have children so they shouldn't apply.





Yep that's what I thought you said...

Lolpredictable!

Two different cases. In the first, we were talking about marriage benefits as a whole. If you insert the word "exclusively" in there, and I agree, then you'll follow by finding one case of a benefit which doesn't appear to serve that purpose and insist that this means my entire argument is wrong. You're laying a trap by framing my argument in an absolute context so as to make it easier to attack.

In the second case, I was speaking of a specific set of marriage benefits. Social security, inclusion on pre-tax health benefits, and pensions IIRC. Maybe tax brackets as well.

There are a few layers to this. There's the state interest, the objective, and the method(s) to achieve that objective. We start with a recognition that children born within wedlock have better odds of being productive members of society than those who are born out of wedlock. This creates a state interest in the problem since the social effects of this can be significant. Then, the objective of trying to increase the number of children born within wedlock appears. That's what the state is attempting to accomplish. Finally, we have the method used. This takes the form of benefits to couples who marry so as to encourage them to marry prior to producing children. Some of those benefits are straight benefits, but many of them are specifically designed to offset possible negative economic effects of marriage so as to make it a more attractive choice. Basically, the state asks "what things would make people want to marry?" and "what things would make people not want to marry?", and it attempts to enhance the first group while minimizing the second.


It's a process of things, not one single thing. Oversimplifying it to "it's about children", or "it's about incentives", without addressing the entire flow of the argument is dishonest IMO. Saying it's about rewarding people who marry without thinking about *why* those rewards exist is not going to give you the right answer. If you think the entire process through though, it makes complete sense.

Edited, Mar 13th 2012 7:17pm by gbaji

Yeah, you've tried the same line in the other umpteen threads. It wasn't a good argument then either.

Yes, I think it's an extremely legitimate request, and its a question I want answered in every case scenario, not just this one. It's not being asked to try and obfuscate the issue, it's being asked because it's the justification for the argument. If we don't question it, we aren't doing our jobs.

This might be news to you, given the fact that you don't seem to believe that assumptions need justification, but all arguments are made up of 2 different types of premises--assumptions and deductions (plus inferences, which fall somewhere between the two). For an argument to be sound, your assumptions must be true and your deductions logically valid. Both are fundamentally important, and BOTH must be defended for an argument to be convincing.

When political thinkers or philosophers make arguments, they take the time to add justification for every single piece of their argument. Even if something appears obvious to them, they still take the time to flesh it out. Why? Because it's the only way to treat your argument with respect, to let it speak for itself. If you don't bother to defend your own argument, why is anyone else going to bother trying to convince themselves it is true. And, to be clear, I mean that an argument like "Eric is a bachelor", even when given in a fully hypothetical situation, will have a line or two after it stating specifically what they mean by that assumption. Is it overkill? Quite often, yes. But there are always wise asses who try and transliterate the word to try and break the argument.

Being clear and concise is considered a sign of respect, for yourself, your argument, and your reader. The fact that you refuse to provide evidence or justification, when asked, but instead try and attack the question is a joke. It turns you into the screaming kid in a candy isle, and earns you about the same level of respect.

When we ask you to prove that marriage laws are created for the reasons you state, we are asking you to justify your assumptions (because you haven't bothered to do so, see above). When we ask you why we should consider intent of creation a valid objection when considering modern needs, we are questioning the assumption that they are.

It's not a separate attack on your arguments, plural. It's an additional problem with the same one.

So stop dodging the question and do your argument the respect you think it deserves. Answer the goddamn questions, explain the logical process of your argument, and justify your premises.

Evading just makes you pathetic.

I'd accept that a bit more if you didn't add the "in every case scenario, not just this one" bit. There's a pretty long list of possible scenarios we could discuss. I have to make my case for every single one of them? That seems to me more of a delaying tactic than anything else.

Meanwhile, no one is ever required to provide a single counter explanation, yet alone a single case where it applies? And you don't think that's a bit unreasonable?



Uh huh. Thanks for the intro to logic 101 cliff notes. But for an argument to be sound, the person proposing the argument does not have to come up with list of every possible scenario and prove that his logic works in every single one, and be eternally subject to others saying "but what about this case?".

If you disagree with the argument *you* must come up with a case which disproves it.


I think you're also missing a bigger point here. There is no one perfect argument or solution. Logic is a tool, but absolutely rigid application of logic would preclude any action because you can't ever absolutely prove anything beyond very basic things. Arguing that a proposed course of action is wrong because you can't prove absolutely that it's the right course under every possible situation is technically correct from a strict logical perspective, but it's also useless.

In the real world we deal with the "best" course of action. And to derive that, we don't just look at a proposed course and reject it if we can't prove that it's perfect (we'd never do anything). We look at two or more proposed courses and determine the best one. So if every proposed course has the same risk or flaw, then that doesn't discount them as being the "best" course. To argue against a proposed course of action you *must* provide an alternative and show that it is a better proposal.


This is why I keep saying that in the absence of an alternative explanation for why our marriage laws and benefits were written the way they were, my argument wins by default. Assuming we accept that there must be a reason, then we should accept the reason that most fits the facts. So far, that's my reason since no one has proposed an alternative. In this case, we don't have a choice between X and nothing. We have a choice between X and "something else". If you can't define what "something else" is, then any attack on X is meaningless. We can't know if the same attack works just as well on the alternative, or if that alternative has other problems that make it a worse choice.



I have provided lots of evidence and justification. But no matter how much I provide you (or others) insist that I must provide more. Meanwhile, no one has even proposed an alternative explanation, let alone provided anything close to an argument, let alone supported that argument with evidence or justification. I'm literally three steps father than anyone else, yet you attack *me* for failing to provide a good argument.


Can you provide an alternative explanation as to why we created those marriage laws and the attendant benefits? Can you support your explanation with better evidence and justification than I have? If you can't, or wont, then doesn't your statement above apply doubly to you?



You're actually arguing that the intent of a law isn't important when considering whether to change the law? I'm sorry, but that seems utterly irrational. It's like not thinking about why planes have wings when considering a redesign to decrease weight. It's likely to end badly.



I have already done this. Repeatedly. Hell. I just did it a couple posts ago. Shall I repeat it?




That statement progresses logically from the observation of a social negative, the interest of the state to address that problem, and the creation of marriage benefits as a means to do so. It's admittedly bare bones, but I've written at great length on this many times already, and I've linked to several other sites which repeat the same argument (more or less) in greater detail. What more is really needed here? Children born to single mothers is a bad thing. Thus, the state has an interest in reducing that event. If more women are married to men, fewer of them will be single when their children are born. Thus, encouraging women to marry men is in the state interest. Having the state provide marriage benefits creates an incentive and acts towards that interest. It's not a complicated argument. It's incredibly straightforward in fact.


Is there some part of that argument you don't get or that you think isn't well explained? Is there some specific problem with it that you want to point out? We've already seen a primary source confirming that the state created at least one set of marriage benefits for this exact reason. So at the least, we can say that there is a confirmed state interest to reduce out of wedlock births *and* that encouraging men and women to marry is a means to accomplish that *and* that creating benefits for marriage is the specific method by which the state might encourage men and women to marry.

That alone confirms that the logic of my argument is "valid". Now whether you believe it applies to all cases or not is obviously another issue, but as I explained above, I don't have to prove that my explanation is "perfect", but only that it is a legitimate explanation. Now, it's up to you to provide an alternative explanation and show that it's a better match for our marriage laws.



I'm not evading. You, and everyone arguing against me are. Why wont anyone provide an alternative? The funny thing is that you can't even prove me "wrong". You just demand endlessly that I provide more and more proof that I'm "right". But I only have to show that my explanation matches the facts of our marriage laws sufficiently well. In the absence of a counter explanation, I "win". You haven't even showed up.

Will you stop evading my question? Will you provide an alternative rationale for our marriage laws and the benefits they provide?

Edited, Mar 13th 2012 7:14pm by gbaji

Honestly, I started by looking at what the laws do, and what effect they have on society today, and argued that they serve as an incentive to get heterosexual couples to marry. The response? "Prove that's why the laws were written". "Provide a primary source from someone who wrote the law". Blah blah blah.

I'd be happy to argue this by just looking at the laws themselves, but others don't want to do that. And frankly, I do think it is a fair question to ask "why was this law created", the considering whether to change it. Obviously, I also think "what does this law do today" is a legitimate question as well. The problem is that those I'm arguing against don't seem to want to pick something to argue "for", they just want to keep shifting the argument around so that they don't have to acknowledge that they don't have a freaking leg to stand on.


For all the demands that I provide endless amounts of proof for every freaking detail of my argument, no one has even proposed an argument about why marriage benefits should be extended to gay couples, how this affects existing marriage laws, and why the result would be positive. And they certainly haven't provided any proof of anything. How could they? They haven't made a case yet! They just demand that I provide more and more proof, and insist that's not good enough, and assume that they're right as long as they can avoid admitting that I'm right.


Again though, we're not proving something is absolutely correct in a vacuum. We're making a choice between two actions: Keep our marriage benefits restricted to heterosexual couples, or extend them to include gay couples. To make that choice, we need to assess both sides of things and determine the best course of action. My argument does this (well, one of them does, the whole "purpose of marriage" is really just a side issue). Where's the alternative course of action? Where's the argument for it? Where's the proof of the assumptions that argument rests on?


My argument rests on the assumption that our marriage laws and benefits serve a specific purpose in society. I've proved that assumption correct (or at least correct in the case we examined earlier). Presenting a case where that assumption doesn't work would at least be a start towards attacking my case, but no one seems willing to even do that. Instead, it's all about me having to provide a complete set of all possible cases and prove that the same assumption works in every one of them. Sorry, but that's an unreasonable level of proof IMO.

I've done more than enough to show my argument has merit. It's up to the guys disagreeing with me to actually find evidence that both refutes my argument *and* supports an alternative argument of their own. I'm still waiting for someone to even make an attempt at that. Again though, I'm not going to hold my breath. In years of having this debate, no one has seen fit to do so, so why do it now? It's a lot easier for the brainwashed masses to just call me names, pat themselves on the back for how smart and educated they are, and call it a day.

Not one of which has *ever* disproved my argument though. Showing that some group of people lobbied to extend pension benefits for married workers doesn't say anything about *why* it was important to them to provide those benefits. But the fact that they did this at a time when same sex couples were not an issue speaks volumes. Think about it. If the objective was to simply allow anyone to extend pension benefits to another person regardless of sex or relationship, why not just change the law so that anyone could designate one other person to be the beneficiary? If it was just about demanding more benefits, why not demand benefits which would apply to all workers and not just a subset of them?


They chose to extend those pension benefits only to couples who at that point were married men and women. What could possibly have motivated the entire group to do this? Even the unmarried workers. Do you think they would have limited the benefits to just spouses if at the time a spouse could be someone of the same sex? Or do you think they would have demanded a different law without a benefit just for married couples. Think about it. Actually engage your brain and think about it.



I don't duck out of these threads. They usually die off after several pages of me providing every answer to every question I'm asked, no one else providing *any* answers for their own positions, and at some point the questions circle around. People start asking the same questions I answered 5 pages earlier. They actually run out and then forget or pretend that I never answered the questions. Well, and that's when they don't just ignore that I provided exactly what they're asking for just a few posts up the page.

Most people argue this issue with lots of passion, but not a whole lot of thought. No argument, no matter how well thought, or how clearly written, will penetrate their minds. But that's ok. I don't write these posts to sway those people. I write them to present an alternative viewpoint to other readers who might never have heard them otherwise. And I'll keep doing this no matter how many times the thread comes up, and no matter how many times the usual suspects say "we've already argued this a dozen times". There's always someone for whom this may be the first time they've heard someone other than a liberal (or strawman conservative) argue this issue.


That's why I do it. No other reason. I mean, it'd be great if people who've already made up their minds could be swayed by reason, but experience says that's not likely to happen. So I go after people who haven't yet been completely mindwashed by the liberal media machine. Fair enough?

Right. So you just stamp your foot each time, stick out your lip and say "But it was REALLY about providing incentives to get married before having children!"

Actually this point has been addressed before but, again, you find it easier to ignore it and come back in four months and pretend everyone was too scared so you must be right.

Just because you argue like a two year old doesn't mean other people have to put up with it.

Joph said my name!

This pleases the liberal hivemind.

I know I went and came up with reasons once. I believe Gbaji's response was, well those aren't the real reasons.

Ah, I remember when I was just a wee Warrior foolish enough to think I was supposed to use a sword. Good times.