the happy conservative

You make a compelling argument again. Clearly, we must try out homosexual marriage to determine whether or not it is a viable alternative to traditional marriage.

The point about departure from slavery is well taken. It was a terrible system that has been promoted throughout history, and it took a vast and different “experiment” to make certain that emancipation was a feasible alternative.

That being said, if historical arguments are taken off of the table as a sort of logical fallacy, then you can hardly use them in rebuttal.

Ignoring the path of history would also seem to be an error. I grant that innovation is extremely important, but uninformed “trial and error” accounts for vast and terrible failures in history. Would socialism work? Let’s try it. How about creating the “new man”? Why shouldn’t we have a “loose confederation of states”? All of these things were tried, and all failed. Arguing that innovation leads only to good will get you nowhere.

So you must argue that there have been both failures and successes. This leads to a problem for your argument. What are the expected benefits to creating homosexual union as a viable alternative to marriage? This is obvious: the happiness of the couples involved. And this is no small amount, I grant you.

However, there are costs involved as well. The fact that marriages end in divorce is a non starter in this argument. Marriages end in divorce because people are incompatible; this is as likely to be true among homosexuals as heterosexuals. So it’s irrelevant for the argument at hand.

There certainly isn’t a reason why homosexual parents couldn’t be more dedicated to their children. Perhaps they could be. But there’s no compelling reason to believe that they will be, and changing the status quo will require some kind of theoretical reason to believe that. Testing works well on mice, with children the costs are too high. There must be reason to “give the benefit of the doubt.” And it must be proven to work on average, rather than in specific cases. That’s the compelling argument for traditional marriage. In most cases, it works. That’s how we got here, after all. Can you make the argument that nontraditional marriage will also work on average?

What is relevant is the expected cost in terms of harm done to children in homosexual unions. I argue that the costs here are high; children need a mother and a father. Women and men bring different things to the table in terms of child-rearing; something like a CO and 1SG. My dad describes it as CEO and Chairman of the Board. Both boys and girls need something of each a male and female parent.

The point is that “trial and error” uniformed by theory is failure, always and everywhere. Until I see compelling evidence that on average, children from single sex families are just as successful as those from traditional marriages, I will stand on my position.

One last thought: If children from homosexual couples are likely to do as well as children in traditional marriages, why should we outlaw polygamy? In fact, since the children would actually have both sexes as parents, these would seem to be more likely to succeed than a single sex family. And yet they are culturally taboo. Why is that the case? In terms of willingness to change social norms to find a better way, we ought to allow the polygamist families to open up shop as well.