Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
While I‘ve been trying to take a break from all politics and news as I bask in the glow of my family staying with me this week, I’ve nonetheless been fascinated by the fall of Egyptian President Morsi, in what must be described as a military coup. I’ve never been a fan of coups as I expect is true of most of us, yet the fall of Morsi has raises issues that I think are far more nuanced than appear on the surface. The salient facts are that after too many years the corruption of the government of Hosni Mubarak (who had been installed by the Egyptian military) led to severe economic issues and dissatisfaction with totalitarian rule. This then led to such massive protest that the military felt compelled, or justified to remove him. Mubarak’s removal was cheered, but then the clamor for free elections arose and after 18 months of martial law elections were held, as the first step towards transitioning to democracy and formulating a constitution.
The Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood was:“Founded in Egypt in 1928as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,” It’s stated purposes was to: “to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood In a country such as Egypt, with its’ long history of totalitarian rule, the concept of political parties was not strong. Through its 85 years history the Brotherhood became the most stable opposition faction in the Egyptian political scene and was the main focus for opposition to whoever ruled Egypt by dint of the Egyptian Military’s backing. Such has been the success of the Muslim Brotherhood that it has branched out to have a significant presence in 20 nations around the world, many without a Muslim majority, such as the Russian Federation, the Indian Subcontinent, Great Britain and the United States. Therefore when the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 took place, the now legal “Brotherhood” was in an excellent position to vie for political power and formed the “Freedom and Justice Party” as its electoral arm. It won more than 40% of the parliamentary seats and its candidate Mohamed Morsi won election as President with 51.73% of the vote. His chief opponent had been a man who served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister. The Egyptian voters were faced, I think, with a “Hobson’s Choice” of Presidential candidates and chose what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? What I will attempt to examine here is a question which is framed as: “Are Religious Fundamentalists capable participating in a pluralistic democratic society?”The stated objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood through its’ “Freedom and Justice Party” politically were certainly ones that few of us could complain about and perhaps soothed the secular voters of Egypt and its non-Muslim Egyptians.
“We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles restricting the functioning of civil society organizations,etc”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
However, that statement is belied by the following objectives openly acknowledged by the Brotherhood:
“In the group’s belief, the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.[21] It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. The Brotherhood strongly opposes Western colonialism, and helped overthrow the pro-western monarchies in Egypt and other Muslim countries during the early 20th century.
On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively. Its founder called for “a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior”, “segregation of male and female students”, a separate curriculum for girls, and “the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes … “
“The Brotherhood’s stated goal is to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state.”
“The Brotherhood’s credo was and is, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
This is then the dichotomy of beliefs that the Brotherhood’s political party presented to the Egyptian voter. On the one hand it had denounced violence and agreed to work within the framework of a democratic political process. Yet its’ core beliefs are that (at least within predominantly Islamic countries) they should be ruled by the beliefs of Islamic law and justice in accordance with their interpretation of the “Qur’an” which they believe is perfect. Part of the task of the Morsi government was to create and implement a Constitution for Egypt. It was also promised that his government would include all factions of Egyptian society including the large group of Egyptian Coptic Christians. What occurred though was that Morsi only brought in Brotherhood political allies into the various Ministries of government and created a Constitution that was decidedly Islamic in content. Egypt, which was one of the most enlightened countries in the Mid East in the treatment of women, was being pushed into a far more fundamentalist outlook. This decidedly religious obsession of the Morsi government failed to pay attention to improving Egypt’s collapsing economy, growing poverty and the social unrest that goes with those conditions. Rapes of women increased in alarming increments and crime soared as people sought the wherewithal to feed their families. Cairo, that great and venerable city, increased to a population to more than twenty teeming millions the majority living in horrendous slums. City services in Egypt’s capitol collapsed under the weight of those numbers. The elation of the 2011 Revolution led inexorably to the despair of 2013 as millions of Egyptians, many with nothing to lose took to the streets and gave the Egyptian Military the tacit permission to remove Morsi and arrest the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is not my intent to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as evil, nor is it to give a litany of their history of violence and terrorism. Such a view is in my opinion one sided and ignores the reality that led to the Brotherhood’s creation and to its success in surviving for 85 years in a hostile Egyptian climate. Historically, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Mid East has been an area controlled by wealth and Western imperial power. While wealthy rulers lived in luxury, the middle classes were relatively small and the masses lived in abject poverty. No doubt from the perspective of the Brotherhood’s founders they were mandated by their beliefs to aid their brother Muslims and to return them to the “perfection” of Islamic Law. Intermingled with those beliefs was the memory of Islamic empire and the determination to return to its’ glory. However, noble their motives may have been and are, within their beliefs is this inherent problem. If you see that everything you believe is “perfect” and mandated by God, then the idea of compromising those beliefs is blasphemy and sacrilege. How indeed can you live in a pluralistic society, when those who reject your beliefs, are by your definition “evil” and “sinful”?
There are two thoughts that arose in my mind and caused me to write this piece. The first is that the entire concept of “Democracy” has been deconstructed through the years by ours and other governments to mean the ability to vote and little else. How often throughout the world have we seen dictatorships legitimized simply because elections were held? A democratic government needs to be supported by democratic institutions and the agreement of its citizens to abide by the results of the electoral processes. Beyond that it needs an overall conceptual structure that provides the framework for the existence of a government that will protect the rights of all the people, not just the ever changing majority. It requires a legal system and a judiciary that protects its conceptual framework (constitution) and with it the rights of the individual. It’s of course more complicated than that, but if you’re a regular visitor here I’m sure you get my meaning and could on your own flesh it out beyond my brief offering. The point is that when the world saw the welcomed upheaval of the “Arab Spring” it had been conditioned by years of propaganda that made simply holding a vote appear to be the acme of a democratic process. There is much more to developing a democratic society than simply voting for a “leader” and the election of Morsi, given his subsequent actions, did not a democratic Egypt make. This leads me to my second thought on this subject.
I seriously wonder whether it is possible for Fundamentalist religionists to actually be able to take power in a democratic society and wield it in a way that allows people of differing beliefs their freedom to have those differing beliefs? When you have a belief system that you not only see as “perfect”, but as the road-map for a perfect society, how can you make the compromises that are necessary to maintain a pluralistic, democratic society? From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood, indeed it is their stated goal; you can only build a “perfect” society based on Islamic law and justice. In this respect they are not really very different from other Fundamentalist true believers that see “their way” as the only way towards true righteousness.
When we apply this to America the abortion debate comes to mind. There is no doubt that the majority of Americans do not believe that women should be denied the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, yet in the years since Roe v. Wade this has been one of the flashpoints of the American political scene. The only conceivable, immutable ending for those anti-abortionists to this national controversy, is the complete end of abortions. Compromise of positions can only be temporary and must include small gains for their side. If and when those opposed to abortion finally gain power they will not hesitate to end it completely, regardless of the equity of the situation and a sizable opposition to their actions. I use abortion though as merely an illustration of this problem. There are many other areas, prayer in schools for instance, where the same dynamic would apply. The problems is that when someone sees their views not only as perfect, but also as the only way to live, compromise becomes ugly and unacceptable.
My contention is that without the ability of people to compromise, maintaining democratic institutions becomes impossible. This is true whether in Cairo, or Washington. The nature of much of today’s religious fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Judaic, is that compromise is impossible, because one cannot compromise “God’s Word”. If you are a true believer than that is an obvious fact of existence and you would cease to be a “true believer” without that philosophy. This brings me back to Morsi and Egypt. I hate the idea of military coups anywhere, but what was to be done in Egypt. There is strong evidence, that contrary to their platform, once in power those of the Muslim Brotherhood returned to their stated principles and were moving quickly to establish the version of Muslim Law upon Egypt, while at the same time denying equality of treatment to others. This fanaticism in the application of their beliefs distracted them with dealing with the economic and social problems that plagued most Egyptians and led inevitably to the Egyptian Military’s coup. I think this is a quandary that is at the heart of the difficulty of maintaining a democratic, pluralistic system in many countries, including ours. While is certainly is not the only difficulty, it ranks high on a list of contributors to political dysfunction. The question is what to do about it and the answer is quite difficult. The problem is that if you exclude religious fundamentalists from the political process due to their authoritarian views, then you no longer have a pluralistic society because of that exclusion. In a pluralistic society religious fundamentalists should also have a voice, or when do you stop excluding. Please help me out here because while I can frame the problem I admit that I don’t have the “perfect” answers.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
The right to procreate and the right to marriage aren’t the same right, your attempts at conflation notwithstanding, David.
The logic for the right to marry is based upon the right of free association and has nothing to do with reproduction.
The notion that marriages are about reproduction relies upon a religious definition of marriage, not a civil definition.
We are a nation of civil laws, not ecclesiastical laws.
DavidM: I wanted to comment on this, too: “For example, it is argued that if God created the male reproductive organ to be put into the woman’s reproductive organ, then society should not encourage others to put that organ into other orifices simply for the sake of pleasure.”
Even if I argue within the system that believes in God as a creator of Man (but not in the literalness of the Bible), I believe that is cherry-picking the evidence of God’s intent. Who says God created the male reproductive organ for only one purpose? It is already obviously multi-purpose, since it is also used for liquid waste elimination.
If one tries to infer God’s intent based on His works, then why would God make it possible for the reproductive organ to be inserted into “other orifices,” with pleasure, if that was not his intent?
God created many animals, particularly within (but not limited to) the insect world, that have sexual organs that are exclusively reproductive fits, other animals apparently never have the inclination to put or receive the male reproductive organ anywhere else. Yet God makes it possible, pleasurable, harmless and desired in humans. In this mythology God is the sole designer of humans, and like other animals could have designed us to make alternative orifices either impossible or sexually undesirable, painful, or not pleasurable.
Why should we believe any writer that claims to know God’s intent in regard to alternative orifices? Their claims are contradicted by the evidence of God’s work. The same goes for homosexuality, which has been observed in over 1500 distinct species. Are dolphins and ducks tempted by Satan?
To believe one knows God’s intent with regard to alternative sexual acts relies upon a literal reading of the Old Testament as the infallible word of God. But, to be consistent, that also demands believing in slavery, polygamy, a brutal subjugation of women and the death penalty for anybody (in or out of the religion) for working on the Sabbath, and the death penalty for disobedience in children. Anybody that rejects part of the package implicitly rejects a literal reading of the Bible.
That means if there are parts they abide by, they do so by choice: Not because it is God’s word, but because they agree with God’s word, which burdens them with personal responsibility for making obedience a matter of personal choice. And that reduces their argument to their personal opinion, which logically has no weight against the personal opinions of consenting adults seeking pleasure with each other.
Porkchop:
Bingo!
davidm2575:
“Religion is more concerned about lining up with God’s will than defining the fundamental rights of men.”
No, religion is more concerned with lining up God’s will (as reported by men) with the goals of the men who reported it.
DavidM: Again, I am not a lawyer, so the following is not a legal argument but an argument about what we logically expect from the law.
We expect the law to not engage in blatant self-contradiction.
Unless you can show that the State’s interest in legal marriage is exclusively about “responsible procreation,” then logically legal marriage has desirable properties for the State that are not about “responsible procreation.”
The fact that the law allows persons to be married that are incapable of procreation and will openly acknowledge that with their partners and the public before marriage, proves that marriage is not only about responsible procreation; there are reasons for the State to allow marriage when that is impossible. And it can be impossible by both intent and misfortune. Vasectomies and fallopian tube tying are voluntary and not necessarily reversible, even hysterectomies can be voluntary. Involuntary states include diseases (such as cancer or other degenerative diseases), accidents (including burnings and accidental irreversible crushing or amputation), genetic abnormality, or just age (such as menopause).
The law has to apply equally, and if there are reasons to allow marriages for couples that cannot engage in “responsible procreation,” then no matter what those reasons may be, homosexuals should be allowed marriage for those reasons. Further, those reasons do not have to be enumerated, articulated or argued in particular; both their existence and validity are implied by the State allowing childless couples to marry that know full well they are medically not fertile.
Therefore it does not make any difference if case law has referenced procreation in the past, procreation cannot be the sole reason for marriage without making the law self-contradictory, since marriage is entirely legal and common without procreation being possible.
Denying a homosexual couple marriage on the basis of their mutual infertility is wrong because it is unfair when marriage is not denied to childless heterosexual couples that are mutually infertile. It means the real reason for denial is not about “responsible procreation” at all, the only reason for denial is the (entirely legal) homosexuality itself.
DavidM: I am not a lawyer, but reading the decision on Skinner, Douglas does not mention marriage, and his argument with sterility is only that reproduction is a basic right, so any law imposing sterility on a class of people must be carefully scrutinized lest “invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws.”
Which ironically enough is precisely what you want to do, make invidious discriminations against a type of individual: Homosexuals. In violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws; namely, the right to marry the person with whom they are romantically committed.
I am not aware of any laws that specifically rest the right to marry entirely upon the right to reproduce; but if there are such laws they are incoherent and an unequal or discriminatory application of the law, since both State and Federal laws clearly allow people incapable of reproduction to marry and be recognized as having privileges and responsibilities unique to marriage.
Whether a civil union can reproduce those privileges or not is immaterial; different names for the same union provide future opportunity for prejudice and bigotry to impose differentials and therefore be once again treated differently under the law and by society and business; for example a business might extend employee benefits to the spouses of “married” couples but not to “civil union” spouses. If you allow a legal distinction, even in name only, the door is opened to discriminate based upon the different names. The only way to permanently ensure equal treatment and protection under the law is to call it exactly the same thing without quibble or distinction: Marriage.
Smom:
they are unified in their fundamental philosophy. The rest is just window dressing.
It is like the republican and democratic parties, the differences are just window dressing, they are fundamentally the same.
My original point was although they both may be “bad actors” as you say, they are different and are not unified.
Smom:
So? They are both bad actors.
Bron, But the Salafists did pull away from Morsi and the MB.
Smom:
here is link:
http://www.meforum.org/3541/salafis-muslim-brotherhood
Smom:
they are pretty much one and the same.
“The Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood has stated on its own website that it is a Salafi movement. Although this self-description would not be accepted by others, like the Salafis themselves, the Brotherhood is also a reform movement, which shares the agenda of strict adherence to the example and teaching of Muhammad.
This agenda is reflected in a speech given by President Morsi of Egypt where he emphasizes that
“the Koran is our constitution, the Prophet Muhammad is our leader, jihad is our path, and death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration…sharia, sharia, and then finally sharia. This nation will enjoy blessing and revival only through the Islamic sharia.””
This is a distinction between the fascism of Mussolini and the National Socialism of Hitler. There really isnt much difference.
Anonymously Yours 1, July 7, 2013 at 4:30 pm
You know Dredd…..
I wonder how the US will be viewed by the military government once….. We withhold the 1.5 bil a year that we give them…..
===================================
MOMCOM will be viewed as a dried up tit.
Egypt will then suckle from another breast.
Breasts further to the east are more likely than not.
davidm2575,
“From the sacred writings of the Bible, we determine the following axioms to be true:
1) In Jesus Christ is found salvation and all knowledge, wisdom, and truth.”
————————————————-
The above is not an axiom, davidm2575, for the following reasons:
Axioms are self-evident propositions that do not rely on prior writings nor culturally complex defined notions such as: “Jesus Christ . . . salvation . . . knowledge, wisdom, and truth.”
Your perambulatory reference to, “the sacred writings of the Bible,” makes your first axiom suspect.
Let’s take your first predicate (meaning something that is affirmed or denied of a subject in a proposition in logic — not the grammatical meaning which is a part of a sentence or clause that expresses what is said of the subject) of your first proposed axiom.
The first predicate to your first axiom is: “In Jesus Christ . . .”
What does that mean? It’s just three words, yet I don’t know what you mean.
Should I take the predicate literally, as in physically being in jesus christ (whatever that is) or should I understand that there is metaphor involved?
I have no idea — as it is your proposed axiom — which falls apart in the first three words of its opening predicate due to your cultural assumptions.
Your next five “axioms” are not worth commenting on as they build upon the failure of your first.
gbk wrote: “The above is not an axiom…”
I was not trying to make the argument myself. I was giving an illustration of how some religious fundamentalists think in a way that does not lead them to be authoritarian and therefore it is improper to embrace a theory that religious fundamentalism is inherently incompatible with democracy and pluralism. Although I am using the term axiom a little loosely, these statements are regarded as self-evident to many fundamentalist scholars of the New Testament.
If I present some mathematical formulas like y = mx + b or c^2 = a^2 + b^2, such stated alone would be self evident to someone studied in Euclidean Geometry as defining a line or Pythagorean’s theorem. However, someone who is ignorant of that field of study might complain that they are not self-evident. In the same way, many fundamentalists who spend countless hours studying the New Testament would find the statements that I listed as self-evident. I provided a list of specific texts so those who can read and reason might see for themselves how someone who believed in the texts as literally God inspired Truth might be led to be non-authoritarian in their leadership style.
DavidM: Oh, let’s add an adjective, now it has to be “responsible” procreation.
Being an unwed mother does not make one automatically irresponsible. It often just means the mother is responsible enough to NOT marry the father of her child, which may result in more difficult custody battles or a relationship she doesn’t want for her child. Women can be sexually attracted to men that would make very poor husbands; and genetic studies do show that sexual responsiveness in females predicts both good genes in men and a dissimilarity in the histocompatibility complex (which is a good thing in a mate, it produces healthier children). Having a healthy child is important, putting up with a jerk for life is not.
Marriage is not about procreation, you never bother to answer why you are willing to allow marriage between some persons that will never reproduce, while insisting other persons cannot get married because they cannot reproduce.
Expanding the scope of marriage to homosexuals does not have to change one damn thing about heterosexual marriage, it is exactly the same institution. There is no benefit to be gained by heterosexuals knowing homosexuals cannot get married, and even if there were some benefit, that emotional gain by a few heterosexuals does not warrant the emotional harm done by denying marriage to homosexuals.
There is no harm done to the state or society by having MORE marriages, either. Marriages imply commitment, commitment is good for society, when people are not alone, they are less likely to go bankrupt or default on loans, and more likely to develop stable relationships and routines with employers, neighbors, and local businesses; they are more likely to buy houses and pay property taxes that support the community and schools.
Marriage is a good thing for society whether it produces children or not; and most homosexuals are unlikely to have children whether they get married or not, so preventing them from marriage does not increase their chance of having children. In fact, marriage is likely to increase their chance of adopting children, which is another benefit to society.
Your definition of marriage and why people get married is contrary to reality. The real reasons that people get married apply to homosexuals as readily as to heterosexuals, and denying them marriage does not do heterosexuals any good at all, it is just spiteful bigotry because some people were brought up by bigots that infected the minds of their children.
Sounds like irresponsible procreation to me.
Tony C wrote: “Marriage is not about procreation, you never bother to answer why you are willing to allow marriage between some persons that will never reproduce, while insisting other persons cannot get married because they cannot reproduce.”
Lacking time right now, I have not been able to address every objection, and this particular objection I discussed in more detail with you previously in another thread. In a nutshell, gender diversity and reproduction are the two primary reasons for marriage, with gender diversity being even more important than reproduction. Therefore, lacking reproductive ability, gender diversity still exists as a reason. It is the idea that mankind comes into the world as two disparate types of individuals: male and female. The joining of a man and woman together results in the completion of being.
In that past thread, I also pointed readers to a manuscript published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy which makes additional arguments in answer to your specific question. I encourage you to read it for a more full understanding. Following is a link to that article:
http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/GeorgeFinal.pdf
More importantly, I must point out that my focus presently has not been about marriage in general, as you seem to imply, but rather about how the courts have come to the conclusion that marriage is a fundamental right. I hope you can appreciate the importance of this distinction. The arguments of the courts in this regard have been based largely upon responsible reproduction. If you are going to change the question now to be about the State’s involvement in regulating marriage in general, then of course there is more involved with marriage than just reproduction.
Going back to the previous point, if the courts used reproduction to define marriage as a fundamental civil right, then those arguments do not apply to same sex unions because such unions from a biological perspective differ in that the sex involved does not result in reproduction. So on what basis are you going to argue that same sex unions are a fundamental civil right? That is the question being skipped over. If you are going to argue on the basis of the freedom of contract, there will be difficulties because since West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the Supreme Court has used rational basis review instead of strict scrutiny for contract law.
Tony C wrote: “Expanding the scope of marriage to homosexuals does not have to change one damn thing about heterosexual marriage, it is exactly the same institution.”
It is impossible to follow you here because if the most basic definition of marriage is changed. The primary and secondary reasons for marriage are rendered moot, so one can hardly call it exactly the same institution. From a legal standpoint, you are broadening the understanding of marriage to be basically a civil contract between two human beings who love each other and want to have a life-long committed relationship with each other. That is not at all how the courts have traditionally dealt with marriage.
iDavid It’s beating a dead horse
” if the courts used reproduction to define marriage as a fundamental civil right, then those arguments do not apply to same sex unions because such unions from a biological perspective differ in that the sex involved does not result in reproduction” As been repeatedly stated your presentation would disallow for anyone who cannot reproduce from being married.
I am 60, I cannot have children (i.e. reproduce). By your interpretation I might as well not even bother to try and find a honey since any marriage would not be allowed as we cannot reproduce.
You added “you are broadening the understanding of marriage to be basically a civil contract between two human beings who love each other and want to have a life-long committed relationship with each other.”
The courts have done that, including SCOTUS. Time to catch up with the times, David.
leejcaroll wrote: “As been repeatedly stated your presentation would disallow for anyone who cannot reproduce from being married.”
Like Tony C, you conflate the concept of defining marriage as a fundamental right with the concept of defining marriage in general. Your conclusion is invalid, as it is basically addressing a straw man rather than the actual subject that I was addressing. It seems to me that you didn’t even bother reading my response to him on this question, or the Harvard Journal article that I linked to which gives more detailed answers to your objection regarding the importance of the reproductive role in marriage.
To take this further, if as you claim, SCOTUS has changed marriage to be simply a civil contract between two human beings, then many liberties will be lost. State government will be able to regulate marriage much more than it has in the past. Furthermore, the latest decision is put at risk for SCOTUS because strict scrutiny no longer applies. As I have complained before, the homosexual agenda has led us into legal chaos. It reminds me of the Dred Scott decision in this regard.
David, I was using your own words. Maybe you meant something different then what you wrote?
leejcaroll wrote: “I was using your own words. Maybe you meant something different then what you wrote?”
No, you are not comprehending my words. My words as you quoted them were: “if the courts used reproduction to define marriage AS A FUNDAMENTAL CIVIL RIGHT, then those arguments do not apply to same sex unions because such unions from a biological perspective differ in that the sex involved does not result in reproduction.” [emphasis added]
The reasoning is that the right to reproduce is self-evident to be allowed to every human being. Marriage being a long standing institution of civilized societies as a vehicle whereby progeny are created and raised, it would be unconscionable to prohibit it. From Skinner v. Oklahoma: “We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty.”
So my point is that the logic for marriage being a fundamental right is based upon the logic of reproduction and survival of one’s progeny. Upon what basis would we argue for same sex unions being a fundamental right? Freedom of Contract? That seems to be the only thing, but since the late 1930’s, the right to contract has not been considered to be a fundamental civil right. SCOTUS uses rational basis review for contracts.
David wrote: “So my point is that the logic for marriage being a fundamental right is based upon the logic of reproduction and survival of one’s progeny.”
No I think I ‘comprehended’ you just fine.
All those who cannot procreate should therefore be barred from marriage.
My feeling is you have a tendency to talk across rather then to the discussion. It is impossible to have a meeting of the minds when that happens.
David wrote: “So my point is that the logic for marriage being a fundamental right is based upon the logic of reproduction and survival of one’s progeny.”
leejcaroll wrote: “No I think I ‘comprehended’ you just fine. All those who cannot procreate should therefore be barred from marriage.”
No. Let me break this down a bit more because your conclusion is a non-sequitur, meaning that it does not follow logically from my statement.
A civil union (whether called marriage or not) that does not have the purpose of reproduction is questionable in regards to whether or not it is a fundamental right. The courts have only argued marriage to be a fundamental right based upon the role of reproduction served by it, and the interest of the State in it revolves around how the family units created by it are better for society as a whole when reproduction is done through marriage. Someone might discover and expound upon some other basis for non-reproductive unions being a fundamental right, but thus far, that has not been done.
Back to your assertion, my statement does not mean such non-reproductive unions ought to be prohibited, only that the right to such a union might not rightly be considered a fundamental or inalienable right, and therefore it would be classified as a right with different standards of regulation.
It just occurred to me that perhaps you did not understand the distinction of fundamental rights and how they differ from other rights? I don’t mean to sound like I am insulting your intelligence. I’m just not sure where it is that we are talking past each other. Evidently we have a different understanding of the terms being used.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-07/salafist-party-asserts-role-in-egypt-as-the-brotherhood-teeters.html Fundamentalists that are more extreme than the MB are asserting their power.
“The White House has had no comment since what’s being called the largest protest in human history demanded the end of Mohamed Morsi’s regime.”
I saw a picture of a young Egytian man holding a sign which said “Obama’s b*tch is our dictator.”
Good for Egypt. Obama should never have supported Morsi. Democracy doesnt mean you get to vote to do away with the freedoms of 49% of the people.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/01/crickets-from-white-house-on-largest-protest-in-human-history/
I’d like to echo what OS said!
David wrote: ” Rather, children require the couple to cooperate for some 18 years for each child produced, to jointly provide and care for them, and to teach them values and responsible citizenship. Responsible procreation like this has traditionally been done through marriage because that is what has been successful through the ages in creating a strong civilized society.”
How does that square with the number of single parents in this country who raise responsible children? How does it square with the divorce rate?
You also wrote you are not religious. Seems incongruous based on your quoting of scripture earlier and a number of your other statements.
I would rather see 2 loving homosexuals married and raising a child then 2 heterosexuals who hate each other and screw up their kids because of their hate but their marriage was okay because they were a man and a woman.
Society should be celebrating love and committed relationships. (and thankfully we are on the path to having more and more states agree with that philosophy.
Maybe the reason many homosexuals did not have monogamous relationships was because the state did not permit them to legally marry. Why bother with trying to have a committed relationship when the state said the heck with you?
And what OS said.