Comment Of The Week: The “Norm Equalization” Case Against Gay Marriage

It’s too late for this now, but VIP commenter chris made an outstanding bio-logician’s case against gay marriage.

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A rational, non-bigoted argument against gay marriage.

Part I
The thing which worries me about gay marriage is that the norms surrounding gay long-term relationships will be imported into the concept of marriage.

http://www.sfgate.com/lgbt/article/Many-gay-couples-negotiate-open-relationships-3241624.php

(The above is a media write-up of a study that found that in a study of 566 gay couples, only 45 percent had made the promise to be sexually monogamous. This is an example of a different moral norm surrounding gay long-term relationships.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=1

(In the above link is a NYTimes piece arguing that homosexual marriage could modernise (that is import different norms into) marriage as an institution.), specifically; “The traditional American marriage is in crisis, and we need insight,” he said, citing the fresh perspective gay couples bring to matrimony. “If innovation in marriage is going to occur, it will be spearheaded by homosexual marriages.”

The importation of a moral norm like the one above surrounding gay long-term relationships would destroy the institution of marriage for heterosexuals who wish to pursue a long-term mating strategy.

[ed: aka beta males R FUKKED]

I don’t know many men who would sign up to an institution where the partners are expected/morally obliged to be emotionally faithful but not sexually faithful. It is much easier for women to get casual sex than men, so any man signing himself up to that deal would be signing himself up for cuckoldry and cuckoldry is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a man pursuing a long-term mating strategy, (and it is the evolved moral norms surrounding the long-term mating strategy which marriage as a cultural institution is/was developed around/for.)

Of course, if people became more knowledgeable about evo-bio/evo-psych and instead started calling marriage essentially what it is, the social-codification of the long-term mating strategy in humans, then this concern wouldn’t really matter. (No worrying about importing norms anti-thetical to the reproductive interests of one party in the relationship and subsequently which disincentivises the pursuit of the strategy from that party as its definition is strictly evo-bio/evo-psych.)

(On a side note, the reason I’ve given above is also why I think a lot of religious people are against gay marriage, they fear that it will change the institution and expose them to cuckoldry. This wouldn’t be the first time that religious norms have been developed to prevent cuckoldry/ensure paternal certainty;

See http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uom-hrp060412.php

Of course, I doubt these fears will be allayed as doing so would go against the feminist establishment’s desire to create a matriarchial/matrilineal cad society where all men are cuckolds (if they aren’t cads that is), but that’s a whole different issue.)

[ed: CH maxim: The feminist goal is removing all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality.]

Addendum:
More evidence of different moral norms surrounding homosexual relationships:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/gays-anatomy/200809/are-gay-male-cou…
see “In his book, The Soul Beneath the Skin, David Nimmons cites numerous studies which show that 75% of gay male couples are in successful open relationships.”

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918360903445962

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19243229

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20635246
This is the link to the actual study from the newspaper reports.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20069497
This one provides a good review of the literature. But it is pay-gated.

Part II
But how on earth could gay marriage equality import different moral norms into the concept of marriage for heterosexuals you might say? Well, it’s very simple. Through the Courts. Remember, in our society, marriage is a legal construct.

I’m going to quote from H. L. A. Hart’s ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’ Harvard Law Review, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Feb., 1958), pp. 593-629.

Which can be accessed here;

http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~horty/courses/readings/hart-1958-positivism-separation.pdf

How do judges decide (reason out) cases?

“A legal rule forbids you to take a vehicle into the public park. Plainly this forbids an automobile, but what about bicycles, roller skates, toy automobiles? What about airplanes? Are these, as we say, to be called “vehicles” for the purpose of the rule or not? If we are to communicate with each other at all, and if, as in the most elementary form of law, we are to express our intentions that a certain type of behavior be regulated by rules, then the general words we use – like “vehicle” in the case I consider – must have some standard instance in which no doubts are felt about its application. There must be a core of settled meaning, but there will be, as well, a penumbra of debatable cases in which words are neither obviously applicable nor obviously ruled out. These cases will each have some features in common with the standard case; they will lack others or be accompanied by features not present in the standard case. Human invention and natural processes continually throw up such variants on the familiar, and if we are to say that these ranges of facts do or do not fall under existing rules, then the classifier must make a decision which is not dictated to him, for the facts and phenomena to which we fit our words and apply our rules are as it were dumb. The toy automobile cannot speak up and say, “I am a vehicle for the purpose of this legal rule,” nor can the roller skates chorus, “We are not a vehicle.” Fact situations do not await us neatly labeled, creased, and folded, nor is their legal classification written on them to be simply read off by the judge. Instead, in applying legal rules, someone must take the responsibility of deciding that words do or do not cover some case in hand with all the practical consequences involved in this decision.

We may call the problems which arise outside the hard core of standard instances or settled meaning “problems of the penumbra”; they are always with us whether in relation to such trivial things as the regulation of the use of the public park or in relation to the multidimensional generalities of a constitution.”

I’m going to propose several assumptions that will be used in a hypothetical. We need not debate these assumptions as I am just using them to illuminate a particular form of logic that would occur when deciding a legal case. These assumptions and the hypothetical will also be used to illuminate the existence of a moral system behind laws which the law attempts to divine (or which Judges at least attempt to) but which doesn’t always map directly onto that moral system.

Assumption 1) Marriage exists as the social codification of the long-term mating strategy in humans.

Assumption 2) The long-term mating strategy in humans consists of men exchanging their own exclusive physical investment for a woman’s exclusive sexual investment. If the man diverts his physical investment to another woman, this is at a cost to the original woman he promised it too. Likewise if a woman directs her sexual investment to another man this is at a cost to the original man that she promised it to.

Assumption 3) Cuckoldry, that is the diversion of a woman’s sexual investment to one man while she is in a long-term relationship with another man is the worst thing that can possibly happen to that man who is in a long-term relationship with her. In a system where cuckoldry is rampant, male monogamy is not expected to evolve or exist, ergo the male long-term mating strategy is not expected to evolve or exist.

Here is a hypothetical for you dealing with the penumbra.
Let’s say we live in a legal system that protects the long-term mating interests of both a man and woman in a long-term mating relationship. Let’s say this society calls this long-term mating relationship, marriage. Let’s say that the underlying justification for this ‘marriage law’ is the evolutionary principles surrounding mating.

Let’s then also say that a group to which this ‘marriage law’ does not apply, suddenly want to be included within the same legal construct.

A married couple in this society want to get divorced. The woman has been adulterous, so the man wants to retract his physical investment in her, which means no providing resources or protection to her. Given that this legal system protects his long-term mating interests, and given that the underlying justification for this protection is the evolutionary principles surrounding mating, the judge allows him to retract his physical investment to the woman.

Now let’s say that the group to which this ‘marriage law’ does not apply is Gay Men. And let’s say that Gay marriage is passed and they are suddenly allowed to marry.

[ed: woops]

And let’s say that the justification for this allowance into the institution is ‘equality’.

Now let’s also say that because these are gay men we are dealing with, that they do not have the same mating psychologies as heterosexual men and so are perfectly okay with sexual non-monogamy. There is no rule proscribing sex with others outside the marriage within gay long-term relationships.

Now here is an instance in the penumbra. A gay couple has married, but they want to get divorced. One of them has been adulterous. However, it is argued in court that the norms surrounding gay long-term relationships do not proscribe adultery. Should this adultery factor into the division of assets, the supply of alimony? The exchange of physical investment from one of the men to the other? Is there even an exchange of physical investment? If the underlying basis of ‘marriage law’ are the evolutionary principles surrounding mating, how do you integrate a group of people whose mating behaviours violate those very principles into a system that has been designed to protect the interests conceived of via those principles? It doesn’t make sense to say that in a gay couple one partner can cuckold the other partner. So how can you apply a rule that retracts the physical investment from one party to another, when the basis for the existence of that rule, cuckoldry, doesn’t occur?

It’s plausible that an exception could be made. Kind of like the whole, we have freedom of speech except you can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre type kind of exception. The law does this all the time. For instance a statue against cruelty to animals might exclude mice, rats, and pigeons from the definition of animal for the purposes of the statute, as a way to allow lab experimentation or pest removal, even though we all know that they are still animals in reality.

But it’s also plausible that because the basis for the anti-cuckoldry rule does not occur in gay couples, that the rule won’t be applied, and it will be left at that.

What then happens if another married couple come along, a heterosexual couple, and they want to divorce? The woman has been adulterous and so the man argues that he should be allowed retract his physical investment to the woman, i.e. no giving her assets he paid for, no giving her alimony due to there being anti-cuckoldry laws. But the woman is clever. She knows that gay married couples don’t have the anti-cuckoldry law applied to them, and she knows that gay marriage is to be treated as equal to heterosexual marriage, and so she argues that since anti-cuckoldry laws aren’t applied in gay marriage, then they shouldn’t be applied in heterosexual marriage as the two forms of marriage are equal. They are the same. Indeed, it is a conceptual error to even consider them two separate forms of marriage. There is only one form of marriage and thus by establishing that a gay couple divorcing don’t have anti-cuckoldry laws applied in their divorce, a heterosexual couple divorcing shouldn’t have anti-cuckoldry laws applied in a divorce either.

Now all of a sudden, this institution, which has protected the long-term mating interests of men and women for centuries, has suddenly undermined a vital protection to the long-term mating interests of one of the parties by treating two separate categories, which have separate moral rules surrounding them, as if they were the same category. If you equalise the categories, then you need to equalise the rules surrounding the categories to make them equal.

Now it is possible that the categories could be equalised, and they decide to just throw an exception in in those instances where it would be unjust to allow equal treatment, as a way to resolve the issue and allow gays and heterosexuals to marry while retaining the different moral rules for each category.

But it’s also possible they won’t. And heterosexual men’s mating interests will be crushed within the crucible of rigorous logic.

Part III
Now you will probably say, “this is a superfluous example, our marriage laws don’t recognise an anti-cuckoldry law, they don’t exist to protect the long-term mating interests of each party, adultery doesn’t affect the division of property or the award of alimony.” And you’d be right. In your jurisdiction they don’t, and in my jurisdiction they don’t. But I would contend that they should. I would contend that for the greater part of both our jurisdiction’s legal history, indeed of Western legal history, that marriage laws did protect such interests and that the ultimate underlying justification for that protection (although not always realised) was evolutionary principles. I would contend that morality is based upon evolutionary principles and that the legal system should attempt to map as directly as possible to that underlying moral schema as much as possible. I would contend that our current marriage laws are an aberration in their rejection of evolutionary principles as their justification and are responsible for disincentivising marriage amongst heterosexuals rendering the institution redundant with each and every passing day. I would contend that this disincentivisation and such disregard of the mating interests of men is an unjust and immoral act and constitutes a moral deficit in our society. And finally, I would contend that the legalisation of gay marriage is a step in a direction away from rectifying that. It is a nail in the coffin of a marriage system being justified by an evolutionary schema.

If you do away with anti-cuckoldry laws, you end the long-term mating strategy for men. You end monogamy. You end the nuclear family as a form of social organisation. You end Patriarchy.

[ed: and you birth hell.]

Now ask yourself, the people on the left pushing gay marriage. Do they have a history of trying to erode and dismantle the nuclear family, do they have a history of trying to erode and dismantle anti-cuckoldry laws and norms, do they have a history of trying to erode and dismantle Patriarchy? To answer the question is to illuminate their agenda with respect to gay marriage and the plausible direction that such equality will take. (Or at least the plausible direction they will attempt to take.)

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Well stated. This is what happens when a culture lives by lies and flees from truth. Penumbras (externalities) carve away at the social bond until all is left in tatters.

Penumbras and emanations of moral universalism. This is the evil of our age.

NW European moral universalism can work in homogeneous, partly genetically-related, societies with widely shared norms. Outside of that crucial context, moral universalism is self-corrupting and defenseless against predation by foreign elements who abide different moral codes. This is why one should never take seriously an argument in favor of NW European moral universalism by an alien outsider who benefits from its largesse.

8======D~~~

COTW runner-up is homosexmaniac.

As a homo with masochistic/passive desires I like guys who are hotter and dominant but not very smart. I like straight guys (and pay them). I don’t think intelligence is a turn-on for men or for women. When you say that women won’t “settle” for a dumber guy is this about the marriage market or sex? I think that a smarter woman might especially enjoy fucking a hot, dominant, but simple-minded man. Of course they won’t admit it but so what.

This comment made me chuckle, for reasons I can’t explain. Maybe it’s the unbridled psychological projection of it. Is there really an untapped (heh) market of straight men willing to go gay for the right price? I find that hard to believe. How much money would it take to overcome the disgust reflex? One biiiiillllion dollars. Even then…

PS A favorite pro-gay marriage argument that doesn’t hold up under the least scrutiny is the “we allow infertile hetero couples (or old couples) to marry, so why not gays?” Infertile hetero couples are implicitly acknowledged as tragically deficient representatives of their class, (or as aged vessels of a formerly fertile couple); the intrinsic state of healthy, NORMAL heterosexual couples is fertility, and therefore the recognition of the deviance from the normal heterosexual state is implied in the magnanimous legality and morality of marrying infertile couples.

In contrast, there is no normal homosexual state of fertility, tacitly acknowledged or plainly seen. When two homos are married, we know that under no normally functioning condition are they able to naturally conceive children.

Anyhow, the bottom line is that all this “mass equalization” that is currently running riot over the West will eventually, (and as the evidence begins to demonstrate much sooner rather than later), corrode and ultimately destroy the very values, moral codes, and even behaviors that were responsible for the West’s rise as a civilization and shining city on the hill.

Get ready for a tumble back into the gutter from whence we once ascended.