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Comment by ScottBurson | Hacker News Reader

> One's position against marriage in general can subsume one's position on gay marriage.

This makes no sense to me. When gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, the total number of extant marriages will increase by no more than a few percent. It seems, at the least, incredibly churlish to me to want to deny gay people the right to marry the consenting single adult of their choice just because you think it's unfair that marriage carries privileges. In short, your beef is mostly with straight people, but you're willing to take it out on the gays anyway, just because they're politically weaker. I can't see this as a principled stance.

And for the record, I agree that some of said privileges should be available to single people as well, like control over hospital visitation. I just think this is a completely orthogonal issue to gay marriage.

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Respectfully, I think you've completely missed my point. Here's what tipped me off:

> In short, your beef is mostly with straight people

No. It's very much not with straight people. It's with the State. The State is the one suppressing people (not just gays) by giving special privileges to a preferred class of people.

> but you're willing to take it out on the gays anyway, just because they're politically weaker.

Uh, no, I'm not... This is exactly why I don't vote and don't contribute to political campaigns.

> And for the record, I agree that some of said privileges should be available to single people as well, like control over hospital visitation. I just think this is a completely orthogonal issue to gay marriage.

Then you haven't appreciated what it means to be against the State's involvement with marriage.

Against State privileged marriage => against all forms of State privileged marriage.

Once again, my point remains the same: being against State privileged marriage (and therefore State privileged gay marriage) does not make one a bigot. This runs contrary to what the lynch mob would like to assume.

>> In short, your beef is mostly with straight people

> No. It's very much not with straight people. It's with the State.

But the State is made of people. And most of the people who support, and benefit from, those special privileges are straight.

> I don't vote and don't contribute to political campaigns.

Okay -- I can understand neutrality. I just can't see your argument as supporting a position of active opposition to gay marriage.

> you haven't appreciated what it means to be against the State's involvement with marriage

Well, I was indicating that I didn't completely disagree with you about it. I certainly don't completely agree, either.

> being against State privileged marriage (and therefore State privileged gay marriage) does not make one a bigot

No. But opposing gay marriage more than you oppose straight marriage does.

Eich donated to Prop. 8. There's no way this makes sense as an expression of uniform opposition to all State-privileged marriage.

I think chipotle_coyote put it very well. Allowing gay marriage reduces the State's involvement in marriage. Presumably the number of actual marriages will increase slightly, but that is because a restriction on them has been removed.

> But the State is made of people. And most of the people who support, and benefit from, those special privileges are straight.

Governments have a monopoly on the use of legitimized coercion. Individuals don't.

The biggest trick governments have ever pulled is convincing everyone that the people is the same as the State. Sorry, but I don't buy it.

> I just can't see your argument as supporting a position of active opposition to gay marriage.

I don't know how to make this any simpler: Opposition of State privileged marriage implies opposition of State privileged gay marriage.

> No. But opposing gay marriage more than you oppose straight marriage does.

Nowhere have I implied or advocated this. The very crux of my argument is that you don't oppose or support one form of State privileged marriage over another.

> Eich donated to Prop. 8. There's no way this makes sense as an expression of uniform opposition to all State-privileged marriage.

The balance of probability supports this conclusion, but it is by no means guaranteed. This is precisely what my argument shows.

> I think chipotle_coyote put it very well. Allowing gay marriage reduces the State's involvement in marriage. Presumably the number of actual marriages will increase slightly, but that is because a restriction on them has been removed.

From the point of view of someone who is against State privileged marriage, this is ass backwards. It's not removing restrictions---it's granting privilege to a larger class of people (at the expense of those without that privilege).

You can rephrase this stuff however you want, but it doesn't change the very simple fact that being against State privileged marriage---and therefore State privileged gay marriage---doesn't make you bigot.

> From the point of view of someone who is against State privileged marriage, this is ass backwards. It's not removing restrictions---it's granting privilege to a larger class of people (at the expense of those without that privilege).

This is a cynical and short-sighted view.

It is cynical because it sees civil rights as a zero-sum game.

It is short-sighted for a closely related reason. Most opponents of gay marriage don't even want to draw a distinction between the religious institution of marriage and the civil institution. In their minds, marriage is divinely ordained, and its earthly recognition in the law is completely natural. "The family" -- meaning their particular conception of what families should be -- is all but sacred.

The gay marriage movement chips away at this belief system in several ways. First, it gives people reason to distinguish between religious and civil marriage; to see that whatever their personal religious beliefs may be, the law is about civil marriage. Also, it presents a picture of marriage as a human creation, rather than divinely ordained. It brings people into contact with unfamiliar family structures. And it makes ideas acceptable or at least debatable that previously were generally rejected. You can see this already with the debate over poly marriage.

In short, if you want to start a singles' rights movement, you should support gay marriage, because emotionally it is moving society in the direction you want, even if it is not yet doing that structurally.

I don't know why you're talking to me about divinity and sacred families. Its relevance eludes me.

You still haven't really addressed my central point, which is that one can be against gay marriage without being anti-gay.

> This is a cynical and short-sighted view. It is cynical because it sees civil rights as a zero-sum game.

I'm not talking about civil rights. You are. I've consistently used the phrase State privileged marriage. I use that instead of just "marriage" to specifically mark privileges that are given to some and held back from others. This isn't zero-sum. People who can check all the boxes get a marriage license plus special privileges. Nobody else can.

> In short, if you want to start a singles' rights movement

Now you're taking my comments in bad faith. Singles' rights? What is that? Do singles have special rights that other people don't have?

Sure, singles lose out on State privileged marriage. But so do couples that aren't married. And so do polyamorous cohabitants.

Ah, but that doesn't paint me as a selfish asshole, so it's not as catchy of an insult. I get it now.

> because emotionally it is moving society in the direction you want, even if it is not yet doing that structurally.

No. I would like society to move in the direction where it doesn't have to exude unquantifiable amounts of effort just to get government to permit them to associate in any way they want.

Your direction is just more of the same: "Oh government, can you pretty please let us make decisions for ourselves?"

I think you've done a pretty good job of painting yourself as a selfish asshole, and trying to paint yourself as the victim is less ingenuous.

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