Not having time to study the question in depth, I’m willing to stipulate sight unseen that marriage customs have existed and may still exist with the intent you suggest. However, I fail to see how any such customs can make sense except in a context where the default assumption is that a marriage will produce offspring. Indeed, providing regulation for the transfer of property to the next generation is entirely consistent with the intent of marriage that I suggested.

Marriage customs can accomplish more than one thing. In fact, one of my central points is that trying to make them accomplish too much can take the institution “off topic”, so to speak.

It’s like in usenet, when alt.conspiracy began to be dominated (to negative effect) by discussions of the Kennedy assassination, the newsgroup alt.conspiracy.jfk was set up for that purpose.

I really think that partnerships which are not about creating the next generation have a different relationship to society and different design needs than those which are reproductively oriented.

-Steve

Anyways, I find it hard to be surprised that a ban like this would pass in yet another state where people are still being murdered for being gay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/23oxnard.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink >

Having said that, the enforcement of this law is lax. However, no changes will be made (in the near or even the distant future) as most political parties obtain vote banks on the basis of religion, caste and creed (almost all of which are against the very concept)and will hesitate to change it.

I hesitate to join this topic, as it is contentious, and fraught with emotion verging on irrationalism on all sides. And, I suspect my views will be in the minority in this venue. Nonetheless, I thought I should speak up. Unlike my usual practice, I’m going to attempt to be less provocative rather than more. The topic itself is provocative, and I expewct that even a restrained airing of my viewpoint will be more than enough aggravation for some. Hopefully you, danah, will recognize and accept my abiding respect for your personhood, even though we differ on a question which touches your heart deeply.

I think the useful topic on which to begin conversation is not that of committed gay relationships, but on the nature and purpose of marriage.

First, let’s consider a question which is only a slight digression from my main line of argument, and may cast an interesting light on the subject.

Why is there sex?

Now the captivating irony of this question, to me, is that a conservative bible-believing Christian and a staunch evolutionist will in general give much the same answer. For the conservative Christian, this is a no brainer. “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth”. Sex, in this view, is an integral part of God’s plan for the continuation of the species.

An evolutionist might want to hedge a bit and pick nits about my use of the teleological “why” in my formulation. But evolutionists, while formally denying any whiff of teleology in their system, have always been only too ready to let it in the back door in various guises. Traits develop and flourish in a population because they contribute to the survival imperative of the individual, the species population, or the larger ecosystem – depending on the flavor of evolutionary theory. The details of how sex fulfills this condition would no doubt be fascinating. For our purposes we need only observe that any such hypothesis as to the particular survival value of sex must be intimately bound up with its role in reproduction.

So, the consensus viewpoint must logically be that sex exists to facilitate reproduction. I would hold that the other popular (and boy, are they popular! aspects of sex are at best ancillary to the centrality of the reproductive function. Surely sex is pleasurable. Surely sex is capable of forging bonds between (and among? individuals – bonds which may compliment otherwise existing bonds based on shared experiences in the realms of intellect, emotion, esthetics, etc. But, were it not for the central role of sex in creating new individuals, these other features would be nearly irrelevant. Emotional, pleasurable, artistic, etc. functions of sex may be important – but they are not central.

Now I’m certainly aware that not everyone considers the continuation of the human species a positive value. If any in the audience are of that persuasion, then I guess you are not who I’m talking to. I’m glad to be here on the planet, and I’m happy for any opportunity to constructively assist others in being here. Your mileage may vary – but you’re not likely to convince me. I will take as given for this discussion that the continuation of the species is a good, and one in which society has a legitimate interest.

So on to the nature and purpose of marriage. I’ll be stating my views of this with little attempt at proof. You will either find them plausible on their face, or not.

Marriage appears to me to have been designed for the purpose of creating a structure within which the sexual bond, the reproductive bond, the economic bond, and the bonds of peer expectations are all mutually reinforcing – with the primary goal of keeping the next generations coming. (No bad puns, please Now reasonable people can argue about how well marriage serves this purpose, but I don’t think there’s too much wiggle room to deny that this is/was the original purpose.

But, “the street finds its own uses for things”. And no less than the various artifacts of cyber-technology, marriage has been massively repurposed. So, by the 21st century, it can actually be argued persuasively, among the educated classes, that models of marriage which are not optimized for reproduction should be given society’s support.

In my view, a marriage custom which is not optimized to support reproduction constitutes a “hack” (in the classical sense). And I’m not going to take the position of opposing hacks. Nor am I going to offer an opinion at this time and place as to the positive or negative value of particular hacks on marriage customs.

I will merely observe that the developers are not obliged to provide support for any particular hack, merely because it is popular.

I think it’s a good thing to have a socially recognized relationship model optimized for assisting our species perpetuation. And I don’t think it is wise or workable from a design viewpoint to try to make that same model carry various other sorts of baggage. That’s entirely too much like the “kitchen sink” model of software development.

The model of “civil unions” or other similar names provides a good alternative. It splits off the non-reproductive functions and provides a model optimized to support committed loving partnerships more generically. Indeed, a heterosexual couple who wished to form a partnership based on celibate companionship (or a childless hedonistic companionship could appropriately use such a model. The one possible objection I see to this from a design viewpoint, is a certain lack of romance. “Civil union” does not have the same power to set a young man or maid’s heart a flutter like “will you marry me”. But, I think this is perhaps somewhat inevitable. There is no other adventure quite like that of collaborating in the creation of a new human. That being said, there *are* other reasons why a heart might flutter, and maybe some romance could find its way into what is presently conceived as somewhat of a dry and legalistic model. The term “committed partnership” as a socially recognized model occurs as a possible alternative.

Anyway, I think framing these issues as questions of “rights” muddies the water and sheds more heat than light. The appropriate discussion is what do we as a society want our relationship models to accomplish, and what design features are appropriate to those goals.

The openly gay entertainer Sir Elton John has been recently quoted in the news as advocating civil unions or the like for committed gay couples and letting marriage be reserved for heterosexuals. Now, admittedly, being a well-known gay celebrity doesn’t make him particularly wiser or more credible than the rest of us. But I really think he’s right on this.

Just a thought,
-Steve

Are bigamists allowed same-sex partners while homosexuals are not?

That said I think there are important reasons to pursue legal avenues as well, starting with the principle of fighting for the civil rights of the hundreds of thousands of people who have just had them stripped away, probably unconstitutionally. (Colin, there are certainly possible grounds for challenging at the federal level; not sure about the state level.) Following your Roe v. Wade analogy, I would argue that the problem wasn’t the original decision, it was the inability to sustain the follow-up in the court of public/legislative opinion and organizing.

One encouraging thing is the swiftness and intensity of the response to the loss. Join the Impact’s wiki has information about protests for this Saturday across the country; there’s also a national Facebook event and individual city FB groups or events, e.g. Seattle. Dominic Holden’s got a nice article in the Stranger, about the Saturday rally here and Kyle, the local organizer. He’s 21 years old (kids today!) and a Mormon. Worth reading!

Stop8.org has a good overview of a lot of other stuff that’s going on ….