not to pick on you, as i typically admire those who post opinions that run counter to the ‘groupthink’ that is so prevalent in academia and in elitist circles, but you make some errors.

1) july 19 2008 has not yet occurred in the reference frame from which i’m posting.
2) i agree that physicists are no more capable of commenting on society than any other member in it. what that poster may have meant was “because physicists often possess excellent analytical skills, they can more readily determine the causes, effects, and possible solutions to societal problems”. i certainly agree that ‘elitism’ a la’ “i know better than you” is no good whether it comes from harvard or mount patmos. nonetheless, as jon stewart put it, “I WANT the president to be elite”, that is, I think we all desire an effective and competent leader.
you are certainly right to demand that physicists who wish to shape public policy adhere to the same standards as anyone else.
3) i am not living in california, and am not really aware enough to comment about whether “judicial activism” is indeed occurring. it was disheartening to me that so many referenda in the past have conclusively determined that americans remain opposed, as a populace, to permitting gay marriage. however, as important a metric as public opinion is to determining what laws to make, we must remember that the constitution was written to protect us from ourselves (by us i obviously mean white, landowning men, a group in which i do not yet belong).
4) serbo-croatian is no longer a single language, but has rapidly split into bosnian, croatian, serbian, and montenegrin. am i missing any?

so to conclude, i agree that physicists are a bunch of pompous jerks who couldn’t fix their car. i’m one of them, and surrounded by them. but why should my blue-collar uncle from peoria not be allowed to enjoy the same rights with respect to his ‘spouse’ as those that are bequeathed upon heterosexuals. they have been together 30 years, and if one was dying in a hospital, spousal visitation would not apply? regardless of whether one finds homosexuality “abnormal”, “normal”, or “disgusting”, it is an undeniable civil rights violation, regardless of any majority opinion. ask yourself; what would a referendum taken in regard to the legality of slavery had as an outcome in 1800? (even assuming the slaves could have voted)

My friend Andy once articulated the ideas of your first paragraph as: “If gays can marry, I’ll love my wife 20% less. And I’ll start kicking the dog, too.” But yah, it’s hard to be snarky, it’s too sweet. When the verdict came down, I was completely bowled over, then couldn’t stop smiling for three days. Equality. We get to be equal!

I’d been happy with registered domestic partnership — same tax status, inheritance, adoption, etc. But the blank look on straight folks’ faces when you say, “RDP” – wow. I hadn’t realized how unequal “separate but” was until we got a shot at “equal.”

(Too bad the comment thread slid down the slippery slope.)

Wikipedia is not only infallible but, in this case, it happens to be right . I, as an Aegean archaeologist, should have noted that polygamy comes from Greek: poly (many) gamos (marrying) — which theoretically covers both polyandry and … um, polygamy.

That’s the problem, isn’t it. Default position = male. ACLU = default position. But I’m sure they’ll help me should I want to marry four husbands.

…and members of Congress should be allowed to publish papers on their favorite theories in the physics journals . . .

They are already allowed to do that. Publishing in scientific journals is, in principle, open to everyone. So, just like a paper by a Congress member won’t be rejected just because he isn’t a physicist, Sean’s input on this topic should not be disqualified merely because he is a physicist.

I have a great deal of sympathy for not providing married people with no children any tax breaks that single people don’t get. There are a lot of other rights and responsibilities that go with marriage, and I can’t see why any consenting adults that want to enter into such a contract shouldn’t be allowed to do so. But tax breaks should only be given to people with children, biological or adopted, whether they are married or not.

Anyway, as Martin kindly pointed out, we apparently have Christianity to thank for the STRONG preference for monogamy in Europe and the Euro-settled parts of the world. So it DOES all really come down to religion, doesn’t it?

As for me, I’m not religious, but I think gay marriage really sucks . . . but if a majority of people wanted the government to recognize it (and remember, we’re talking OFFICIAL government sanction here, as opposed to any particular religious sect(s) recognizing gay marriage, which in the U.S. they are absolutely free to do), I’d find it easier to swallow.

What galls me is that 4 members of the Cal. Supreme Court overrode a pretty hefty vote of the electorate just a few years ago in California, which defined legally-recognized marriage as being only between opposite genders. Of course, elitists like those 4 Supreme Court justices, Barack Obama, college professors, and most of the posters on this thread, feel they know what’s best for society, so they wonder why we’re going to all the trouble and expense of having elections in the first place — it just lets a bunch of unwashed peasants, who are bitter about their economic circumstances and thus cling to guns, religion, and suspicion of the unfamiliar, have a say in important things that they don’t know much about. Right?

Anyway, for those of you not up to speed on political activities in the Golden State (California), please be advised that a state constitutional amendment will be on the November ’08 ballot (along with the U.S. Presidential race) defining legally-recognized marriage as being only between a man and a woman. Given that the similar measure passed only a few years ago by a substantial majority, my guess is that this constitutional amendment will also pass. Then, of course, the legal challenges will start again (on the grounds that, e.g., the amendment was vaguely worded, not enough ballots were distributed in foreign languages like Serbo-Croatian and Tagalog, etc., etc., whatever opponents can dream up) — not to mention the legal limbo that gays who got married in the interim will be in. By the way, I have no idea why the first marriage proposition that passed a few years ago WASN’T in the form of a state constitutional amendment, which would have precluded the Sup. Court majority from declaring that it was contrary to the state constitution. Also by the way, I think that the man most responsible for getting that first proposition passed was former X-15 astronaut Pete Knight, who then was in the California legislature (he’s now deceased).

As regards the suggestion from someone that physicists should make public policy — sure, and members of Congress should be allowed to publish papers on their favorite theories in the physics journals . . .

Thats essentially the entire scope of the argument. The only reason homosexuals even care about this being called marriage, rather than a civil union, is precisely for those benefits. Their argument is one of fairness.

However, if its about fairness, why can’t I marry my sister, or my pet doll, or have many wives?

The slippery slope (fallacy) ends up with just about everyone married to something, and then the entire point of having the tax break to begin with is pointless, b/c it stands to reason you would automatically marry something. It costs nothing, and you get free money.

So the entire problem has never been about gay marriage perse, and rather about the arbitrary line thats drawn. At least when it was the will of the majority it had some measure of logic behind it. But now, it strikes me as just an extra bureacratic and pointless rule that should be erased from the lawbooks forever.

So, while the US is debating “gay rights”, Europe is debating “robot rights”. We are two centuries ahead of the US!

I recommend EJ Graff’s What is Marriage For?: The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution. It’s a reasonably well-researched Western history, perhaps shorter than it could be, but quite solid.

No doubt the definition is changing, but I think that we can safely say that it’s doing so within a context that’s familiar to all of us. No one that I know is romancing his brother. I do know a few who had commitment ceremonies with their bicycles, but I suspect that on investigation, the content of those human/machine relationships has more to do with “sense of humor” than “unleashed waves of wantonness.”

>Allowing gay marriage hurts absolutely nobody, and allows many new people to be >happy in ways that have always been allowed for heterosexuals. It should be a >complete no-brainer.

I don’t think this is correct. Marriage is often recognised in tax codes, usually favourably. Tax breaks for married couples in some way hurt those who are not married, even if the effect is small. (Likewise complete tax exemption for myself would hurt other people, even if not noticeably). This is justifiable because good marriages benefit society: the government incentivises parents to stay married and provides a sound framework to bring up children in.

Providing the same benefits to civil unions/gay marriage does have a financial effect: the state provides a tax break to a relationship that was not previously recognised. This may be justifiable, or it may not. One reason that does not justify it is that it extends to homosexuals something that has always been allowed to heterosexuals. This reason doesn’t work because it isn’t true: marriage laws have never cared one dime about sexuality, they always cared about sex – what mattered was that it was a man and a woman, not what their sexual desires were. There is no legal requirement to fancy someone in order to marry them.

To me, it seems a no-brainer that same-sex relationships are for basic reasons of birds, bees and babies qualitatively different from heterosexual relationships, and so should be treated differently. In this respect gay marriage seems to me almost an oxymoron: marriage as an institution exists because the sex involved is procreative. Peter and John may love each other and have a deeply committed relationship, but it’s not marriage because their plumbing doesn’t work that way.

That Peter and John cannot get married the way Peter and Jane can doesn’t mean that Peter and John should not have rights in hospital visiting, inheritance, etc, but that is a different situation. I also see no reason why Peter and John should receive benefits that are not accessible to (for example) two brothers living together, who will be hit by inheritance tax in a way Peter and John will not.
And to return to my original question: if everything is about consenting adults, which argument for gay marriage is not also an argument for me to marry my identical twin? (if i had one)

piscator