Your attempted equivalence is false. Your reasoning has defeated itself. Your remarks are anti-marriage.

It's a very good thing that marriage means far more than your failed notion of "SSM".

Note: S.S.M = Specious Substitution of Marriage.

* * *

Kevin, "for the, oh, 100th time" (as you would say) it is on the record that you've failed; you have relied on circular thinking and rules of argumentation that turnout to support the core of marriage and destroy your complaint and proposed remedy.

You did that. I'm just pointing out that NOM provided the place for you to demonstrate the profound weaknesses of SSM argumentation.

You are not at fault, really, since you are merely spouting what the SSM campaign has been asserting all along.

NOM has provided a very good service here. You have played our part. Thank you.

Good thing marriage has nothing to do with procreation, eh?

“You have failed, continuously, to distinguish SSM from the rest of the nonmarriage category”

For the, oh, 100th time: same-sex marriage is a part of MARRIAGE, not nonmarriage. That’s why they call it same-sex MARRIAGE. Same-sex marriage is a subset of marriage, just like a male nurse is a subset of “nurse.” Just like “second marriage” is a subset of marriage. Just like “unhappy marriage” is a subset of marriage. Just like “inter-racial marriage” is a subset of marriage. These sub-categories are all part of marriage. They are not part of non-marriage.

“NOM’s website is thus providing a valuable service.”

Raising money to oppose marriage rights for a minority, in violation of the US Constitution, and denying the children of same-sex couples the security we want for the children of opposite-sex children is a “valuable service.” Yikes, that’s some crazy family values system you got going on, Chairm!

No one-sexed arrangement is infertile because it can never be fertile in the first place. The lack of the other sex is NOT infertility.

We do use shorthand and can say that the lone individual might be fertile; but what is left unspoken, because it is glaringly obvious, is that the individual might be fertile with the other sex.

With the other sex. Not one sex alone.

This has zilch to do with whatever an all-male or an all-female arrangement might do sexually. The constancy of nonfertility is universal to all one-sexed arrangements (a lone individual, a parade of men, or an auditoriaum full of women) -- sexualized or not.

Your own comment concedes that outright. But you'd press identity politics into it, shamelessly.

Your irrational demand that society morally equate these two different things is itself morally repugnant.

* * *

In the jurisdictions you listed, there has been a localized merger of SSM and marriage. That merger is, according to your own argumentation, sex-neutral. To achieve that, the core of marriage is abolished. In its place is a hollow thing that, in your own comments here, you have conceded lacks a core meaning and lacks societal significance.

You have failed, continuously, to distinguish SSM from the rest of the nonmarriage category. The merger fails to do so, as well.

Your demand is not for marriage equality. It is for the false equivalence of nonmarriage with marriage. That is the regressive meaning of the merger.

* * *

I note, again, that you insist on certain standards that you abondon when it comes to your own attempted justification for the merger.

No exceptions can be allowed! That is your rule.

You have over-stretched in search of what are merely apparent exceptions, and not actual exceptions, to the core meaning of marriage. You have done so by misrepresenting that core. And you have done so while conceding that SSM would come with many exceptions.

Your comments here are cowardly. You runaway from the actual disagreement. You cheat against your own stated rules and standards. You routinely misrepresent and, after correction, continue to do so -- which makes your repeated misrepresntations outright lies.

That all adds up to a bigoted advocacy of SSM.

Other SSMers at least try to make SSM stand on its own two feet. Not you. It is your weakenss and even fellow supporters of SSM can see it on the record here in these comment sections.

NOM's website is thus providing a valuable service.

“Now you’d equate homosexuality with old age. That’s quite the skip, hop, and jump.”

No, I’m equating the infertility of homosexual couples and elderly couples. One couple is allowed to marry and, in 45 states still, another couple isn’t. Neither can produce children conventionally. Either may or may not be raising children, who benefit by having married parents (again, an aspect of marriage discrimination you carefully avoid: what is best for the children of same-sex couples, being raised by married parents or being raised out of wedlock?)

Your marriage concept, despite the lead balloon of reality, is about procreation. Why should imitators, then, with no chance to procreate, such as elderly couples, be allowed to marry. Why are they given special status as part of the non-marriageable set you defined but not same-sex couples?

“Fertility is not sex-neutral”

Wrong. Fertility is a characteristic of the individual, not a gender. You might be confusing fertility with procreation. Homosexuals, as individuals, are every bit as fertile as heterosexuals, as individuals.

“The sexual basis of marriage is two-sexed, not one-sexed, as our laws express in provisions for consummation, adultery, paternity, and so forth.”

Except when it’s not, as in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire and soon, Washington, DC. And that’s just in the US? Let’s all welcome Argentina to the growing number of states and countries adopting marriage equality!

“Justify special status for SSM.”

There is no special status, just equal status. Simple!

Your imitation of a brick wall is amusing.

* * *

Now you'd equate homosexuality with old age. That's quite the skip, hop, and jump.

The comparison to be made is between the one-sexed the two-sexed arrangements. Regardless of sexual orientation the former is constantly nonfertile and the latter is variably fertile.

You basic error is the attempt to transform a difference of degree (the variability of human fertility) into a difference of kind (one-sexed arrangement is constantly nonfertile). Upon that error you skip to a false equivalence of the one-sexed and the two-sexed scenarios; and upon that mistake you jump to a false equivalence of SSM and marriage. You have fouled-out at the start line.

Predictably, you changed your comparison to that of homosexuality and heterosexuality -- and then changed that futher into a comparison of gayness and straightness.

* * *

People begin young and grow old, obviously. This is another variable feature of human fertility. It supports my previous remarks and defeats Kevin's assertions.

A two-sexed combination, at birth, begins life pre-fertile, but would grow into fertility, and would mature into the post-fertility of old age. Even during the height of fertility, there are periods of subfertility and infertility.

A one-sexed combination is nonfertile throughout the aging process. This is a constant that defies the variability of maturation. No change -- regardless of age and regardless of sexual orientation.

Sure, we can use shorthand and refer to the 'fertile individual', however, what is left unspoken is obvious -- that individual would be fertile with the other sex. Fertility is not sex-neutral. And that's so regardless of the sexual orientation of the individual. That person's identity group is irrelevant, too.

Marriage, at its core, directly reflects all of this directly and also indirectly.

* * *

So, no, old age is not an actual exception.

The methods by which a one-sexed arrangement (a lone individual or a twosome or a moresome) might attain children provides abundant evidence of these significant facts.

The sexual basis of marriage is two-sexed, not one-sexed, as our laws express in provisions for consummation, adultery, paternity, and so forth. This is also expressed via the lines drawn based on age, relatedness, and the limit of one man and one woman.

None of that is significant to the meaning of SSM, of course. As Kevin's comments keep reminding us all.

* * *

Denial on the part of the SSMer does not lighten the burden that SSM argumentation has created for itself. Nor does the arbitrariness of favoring a subset of nonmarriage over the rest of the category.

To SSMers:

Justify special status for SSM. If your axiomatic beliefs cannot permit you to make the attempt, then, justify special status for SSM/marriage.

Eligiblity is based on what the thing actually is. The lines should not be arbitrary, according to the pro-SSM complaint (as Kevin has confirmed).

His rhetoric -- that people are married when they marry -- illustrates the superficiality of that complaint. Before they marry they are either eligible or not. What is the basis for drawing any lines around SSM/marriage?

If you cannot justify the special status of marriage, then, you'd concede that in your view marriage does not merit its special status -- because preferential treatment of the social institution would be unjustified and arbitrary.

Everything else you'd say on the subject would be superfluous.

That is, until they get married. Then they are a part of the marriage category.

“Nonmarital trends have provided the empirical evidence for reaffirming society’s preference for the core meaning of marriage.”

Which is?

“His remarks suggest that society must treat homosexuality like infertility, which is a medical disability.”

Not at all. The point is that marriage and children are not connected. To create a valid connection, there can’t be so many exceptions, even possibly rendering that connection the exception not the rule. If marriage is to encourage procreation, it is not doing a very good job: many fertile married couples have no children by choice, and infertile couples are permitted to marry. Like senior citizen couples, same-sex couples are infertile. Why do the former get to marry and the latter don’t?

“The there is some great societal significance he would assign to gayness”

The better observation is there is NO great societal significance to being straight. Therefore, straight people do not get special rights denied to gay people. If all marriage is outlawed, as may have been inadvertently done in Texas and a few other states in their zeal to stop same-sex couples from having legal rights, I would be ok with that. Either all citizens have the right to marry or none do. There’s no legal middle ground.

What IS the significance of sex integration and responsible procreation? What do they even mean and how are they relevant to the discussion? They have the air of sounding important; are they? How?

“SSMers denounce the core of marriage as unconstitutional and worse”

I don’t think “SSMers” even know what you mean by the “core of marriage” to even denounce it as anything!

“The SSMers are left with the burden of justifying boundaries between SSM and the rest of the nonmarriage category”

It’s not particularly burdensome to explain that same-sex marriage is a marriage between two people of the same sex. A couple is either married or it’s not. The nonmarriage category includes unmarried persons.

“So the SSMer must insist on the arbitrary use of governmental power….”

I think the many Americans who support marriage equality are questioning the arbitrary use of government power to discriminate against gay couples.

“Yet what is the central theme of the pro-SSM complaint? That the marriage law arbitrarily discriminates.”

Exactly. In violation of the US Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection for all citizens. You get it! Yea!

Where arrangements -- by type -- include a lack (or a diminishment) of sex integration and responsible procreation, families experience vulnerabilities. Most especially those with children. Nonmarital trends have provided the empirical evidence for reaffirming society's preference for the core meaning of marriage.

However, because of the beating that the social institution has been suffering for the past few decades, those vunerable families in the nonmarriage category have become more numerous than ever before. Society can take steps to try to ameliorate the social ills and the disadvantages that these families face -- but we cannot make sex-segregation the new sex-integration; we cannot abandon the great merit of responsible procreation.

Provisions for designated beneficiaries, and other measures, already exist for nonmarital families. More can be done -- especially through civil society without increasing dependancies on government.

But the solution to nonmarital trends is not to merge nonmarriage with marriage. Marriage is special and is its reaffirmation and its strengthening is the longterm solution to the tragic increase of vulnerable nonmarital families.

This is stating the obvious, but sometimes the oblivious SSMer needs to be reminded of the obvious right under his nose.

Most couples who experience infertility resolve their problems without resort to intrusive medical interventions. More than half already have children before the problems arose. Of those who do seek fertility treatments, most, by far, do not use IVF/ARTs. And for those who do use such practices, the vast majority -- more than 93% -- do not use "donor" sperm and ova. But even among that tiny percentage who do use donors, their children are born of a man and a woman; and for the married couples those children are born to a union that unites fatherhood and motherhood.

But what does the SSMer mean by seeking the rarest of apparent exceptions -- and inevitably coming up short? His remarks suggest that society must treat homosexuality like infertility, which is a medical disability.

The absence of the other sex in a chosen one-sexed arrangement is not infertility nor is it a medical disability. This is true whether the arrangement is sexualized or not -- whether it is gay or not -- whether it is registered with the government or not. The people who'd chose such a scenario might not feel the lack of the other sex, but it is a lack in terms of fertility. Obviously.

Besides, the SSMer would not wish to be understood as declaring homosexuality to be a medical disability in need of treatment. Quite the contrary, of course.

So what can the SSMer mean by this comparison? Something he has already conceded but keeps running away from. The there is some great societal significance he would assign to gayness; something he'd analogize with, for example, the couple in which a woman has undergone life-saving surgery for cancer and has been rendered sterile; or the couple in which a congenital problem has caused the husband to become subfertile. The SSMer seeks to use emotivism of a particular dishonest variety.

More on that in a bit.

Consider that the reproductively healthy man and woman share their fertility BECAUSE they are an opposite-sexed twosome; yet they are infertile -- or subfertile -- for most of each and every month during the height of the childbearing years. Human fertility is variable, by its very nature, and is constantly two-sexed.

All one-sexed arrangements are, by their very nature, essentially nonfertile and can not therefore be fertile nor infertile. This is constant. It does not vary. There is no medical condition to resolve -- neither with medical treatment nor with empathy.

A lone individual can no more be fertile -- without the other sex -- than can a parade of gay men or an auditorium full of lesbian women.

Nonfertility is constant even for those in such scenarios who are healthy and could be fertile with the other sex. The arrangement is neither fertile nor infertile.

The lack of the other sex prevents impregnation even if the persons involved in the one-sexed arrangement would engage in lots and lots of same-sex sexual gratification.

A license to SSM would not change that one iota. Obviously.

So the attempted analogy of homoexuality and infertility is more than odd. It is absurd on its face.

Considering the strain on relationships that infertility can create; considering the real disabilities that create this condition; considering that the condition is very often resolvable within the marriage; and considering that the couples who do manage to have children will also unite fatherhood and motherhood, one must really be desperate to suggest that infertile couples are some how marginal to the core meaning of marriage.

It is rather crude of the SSMer to equate homosexuality with a medical disability; and crude again for the SSMer to attempt to the core meaning of marriage cannot apply to infertile couples; and crude again for the SSMer to denounce that core meaning while asserting that the segregation of motherhood and fatherhood is somehow the moral equivalent of the solidarity of motherhood and fatherhood.

* * *

The marital presumption of paternity has a sexual basis that is extrinsic to the one-sexed arrangement -- whether that arrangement be gay, lesbian, or straight. This is the public-sexual aspect of the social institution of marriage.

There is no equivalent for SSM. The SSMer keeps admitting this and yet cannot provide the special reason to equate SSM with the special status of marriage.

Marriage and human procreation are definitely connected; responsible procreation is at the core of marriage along with sex integration. That is a constant even if human fertility has always been variable.

The constancy of SSM argumentation is found in its long litany of false equivalencies. When SSMers drag children into the pro-SSM spotlight, in center stage, it is merely to use them as temporary mascots. But when SSMers do that, they remind us all that responsible procreation is central to the special status of the social institution of marriage in our society.

Pointing outside of marriage - to one-sexed arrangements (with children or childless) defeats SSM argumentation.

But expect the SSMer to stumble forward toward the quicksand where he invites all of society to camp-out.

SSMers denounce the core of marriage as unconstitutional and worse. So SSMers have burnt the bridge and cannot now reclaim the boundaries that are based on the core of marriage.

* * *

Bridge, not bride.