ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1d ago
Why would the State care if Bob got his balls cut off years ago? Why would they make some special process to 'allow' this? It's extra work; it seems to serve little purpose on your account. They have a perfectly good default to revert to - you're cousins, so you don't get married. Why would they do this other mess?
ControlsFreak
1d ago
"By default any man/woman pair who ask for it can be legally married, but we will deny it to couples that could produce inbred children with defects in the hope that that'll make them give upon fucking one another at all"
What about the bit about letting them marry if they show that they're infertile?
ControlsFreak
1d ago
Specifically concerning the example of some people only being able to marry if they show that they are infertile. I thought I was speaking plainly about this, but apparently, it didn't come across. What do you think they were trying to do?
I am not treating this as a fight, but it's clear that you are. You call it such and your demeanor is indicative that you may have something like cortisol levels going on which correspond to you perceiving it as a fight. I just want you to think about a brute fact in the world and give some impression as to what you think is going on. If I was being a jerk, I'd say that your immediate reaction to lash out at your interlocutor rather than have a respectable conversation about the topic is, yes, why the wokies won so many political fights. Bullying and anger won a lot of political victories, but left a lot of people privately unconvinced and resentful that such tactics managed to ram through major societal changes, rather than reasoned discourse.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
Possibly. Possibly not. I'm not really viewing it as a "debate". I'm just encouraging you to think about things. It would be nice to get your perspective on how you think about it. Perhaps it's something you've never thought about before; it would then be useful to get your fresh perspective on the matter rather than simply treating it as a "debate" to be "won", because that often leads to people simply trying to shove things into a pre-canned bin where they think they can just draw from their pre-canned set of talking points. So far, I think it's apparent that you don't have a simple pre-canned talking point for this, specifically, so it's useful to get your first impressions concerning the brute fact of such laws.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
if the line between who should be allowed to marry
Again, the perspective change needs to be pretty deep. It is not about who is "allowed" to marry. It's about what the State is trying to encourage/discourage. Think about the example I gave; see if you can come up with an idea for what it is that they're trying to do.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
If you are saying the line between who can marry and who cannot, which puts gay couples on the "cannot" side, is drawn on the grounds of who can produce children and who cannot
This "if" is precisely what my example points out is not true. The entire premise of the argument is simply false. The entire frame of reference simply does not make sense. Basically the entire remainder of this comment is sort of pointless from the get-go because of this flaw.
ControlsFreak
1d ago
This sounds like needless complexity, and it would invite a whole host of additional complex questions. Is there an expiration on a provisional marriage? Suppose you want to get married early, but delay having children a bit, is that allowed? Why or why not? The outrageous news stories will kill you, too. "This couple has had two miscarriages and is now about to hit the deadline on their provisional marriage!" This kinda thing will never fly with the public.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
then where's the law banning infertile people from marrying? Because on the axis of "family formation," there's no difference between them and the gays, is there?
As mentioned below, there are actually laws saying that some people couldn't marry unless they could show that they were infertile. Your entire frame of reference simply does not make sense, and you need a pretty significant perspective change.
Further, rather than there being "no difference", there is actually quite a huge difference, particularly in terms of intrusiveness to privacy. The government can very very simply look at the government documents which state that they're the same sex. What kind of standards, and what kind of intrusive nightmare would it be to require something like proof of fertility? @WandererintheWilderness would call it "Chinese-style authoritarian social engineering". These examples are worlds apart rather than being "no different".
ControlsFreak
2d ago
What do you think the purpose of such laws is?
ControlsFreak
2d ago
entirely material, but do not support discrimination between same-gender couples and opposite-gender couples one or both members of which is entirely infertile
Interestingly, many states had laws on the books that some people couldn't marry unless they showed that they were infertile. Namely, close relatives.
This has been trod over time and time again, but people still draw on this silly argument.
Do not impose your religious beliefs on people who do not share them.
Do not impose your atheistic beliefs on people who do not share them.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
In general, how sure should we be that the stock market today is doing well because of Donald Trump and not in spite of/unrelated to him?
In general, I've found that the answer to whether the president causes the market to go up/down is an XNOR function with inputs "Is the market up?" and "Is the current president on my team?"
I don't know that I agree. This is sort of a weird and arbitrary thing to try to maximize. I think plenty of effort has gone into messaging that marriage is a big, serious thing, shouldn't be entered into lightly, and really annoying for the State to unwind if it goes poorly. Plenty of States have processes that take some time and effort, in part so that they're not just maximally implementing all marriage requests, when they could be really rash and hastily/carelessly requested.
I don't buy this one, because I don't think many citizens want to care about some cousins getting married. It's a tiny portion of the population. I think plenty of citizens are perfectly fine just not letting them get married. That's a perfectly fine default. Most citizens think they probably shouldn't even be having sex in the first place! There's basically no point in even thinking about them getting married. There's almost certainly not a ton of folks clamoring to create some special process for this for apparently no reason other than some vague quantity maximization. In fact, I think most citizens don't even know that this sort of case exists! On first impression, I imagine plenty would be perfectly happy with just reverting to the default of 'you're cousins, so you don't get married'.
I don't see how that's the case, either. It doesn't make administration much easier to have such a tiny percentage of people having sex marginally getting married, especially not for some weird special case that most people disapprove of anyway. This would be a tiny tiny change in the numbers and almost certainly not worth the effort.
Yeah, I just don't see how there's "value" in them just getting married. Even if there was, then there seems to be little reason for the rigmarole of proving infertility. The biggest issue with your account is that there's just no reason for the rigmarole if they're just maximizing requested marriages implemented.
Instead, what I think is far more parsimonious is that the State is using marriage as an incentive. They know that there will be some cousins out there who want to be having sex and such. They can't just ban this. But they certainly don't want irresponsible, inbred procreation. So hey, Bob and Alice; you'd like to get married, right? Ya know what, Bob, if you just cut off your balls (or take some less drastic measure to ensure infertility), we'll let you get married. I think this is much more parsimonious than some vague quantity maximization, especially if they're going to go to the trouble to set up a whole process for this, with what are likely to be some necessarily complex rules (how exactly do you verify infertility, what is sufficient verification, etc.).
Would you disagree?
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