Scwarzenegger announces veto on Californian gay marriage bill

[vanesch]

Socio-biological "explanations" of human behaviour is patently false.
To take just a single point:
The turn-over rate of social customs is so fast that to say that human behaviour is dominantly determined by evolutionary concerns, is just sheer nonsense.
But, when you accept that it isn't a dominant factor, then you've stepped out of the explanatory constraints set by a strictly Darwinian theory.

Human behaviour is not of course completely explained by purely genetic considerations, they only give you AVERAGE tendencies over time scales long enough to have an evolutionary influence. The turn-over rate you talk about are the statistical fluctuations around those long-term averages. So everything that happens only on a time scale of a few hundred years or less will not play a significant role, and it plays less and less a role because our society becomes so terribly complex that it is difficult to say what pattern of behaviour will result in better gene transfer.
So all you can deduce from sociobiology for our species are traditions that must have been the same since we were hunters-gatherers and early civilisations. One of these traditions is the 1-man 1-woman (with some adultery :-) relation, raising their kids (at least for a few years). I only wanted to explain why that tradition is so much ancred in our, well, traditions. Not that things SHOULD be that way. Just why traditionally they were considered to be "good".

 

[Townsend]

It is the investment over several years needed to successfully raise kids which induce the necessary stability of the couple, which needs to invest very strongly in that, and should only do that if there is a serious Darwinian advantage attached to it.

1. The dinks are continuing to rise in numbers...my wife and I will always be dinks

2. There is no shortage of people in the world. In fact I would say some countries could use a lot more homosexuality. Heck, the whole world could use a lot more homosexuals...

The problem is that people are not evolving through any process of natural selection. A mentally retarded person who would not likely generate offspring 10k years ago now has a better chance of producing offspring than a lot of normal, intelligent people do.

In fact overpopulation is a good reason to bring down the institution of marriage, if the purpose of marriage is in fact to foster a family.

 

[faust9]

Wha... ? Am I missing a point you are making here?

The point I'm making is you are trying to tie religion to the word marriage while still allowing for "civil Unions". To bolster your stance you used the Uk as an example to wit I stated we are not in the UK we are in the US. California is not bound by the laws of the UK it is bound by the laws of the US. The laws within the US hold that marriage is a contract---nothing religious---so seperating marriage and civil unions in name only is stupid. They are the same thing just different names so why bother? Because civil unions can be looked down upon(seperate but equal all over again)...

 

[TRCSF]

Socio-biological "explanations" of human behaviour is patently false.
To take just a single point:
The turn-over rate of social customs is so fast that to say that human behaviour is dominantly determined by evolutionary concerns, is just sheer nonsense.
But, when you accept that it isn't a dominant factor, then you've stepped out of the explanatory constraints set by a strictly Darwinian theory.

Well, I don't think it's patently false. It's not a rigorous science, but that doesn't mean it's patently false. In fact, I think it's as good an explanation for human behaviour as any thing else.

Sure, some customs change over time in different societies.

And there are some customs that always stay true regardless of society. e.g. incest is social taboo in every single society (with only very rare exceptions, the very poor and the very rich), the presence of homosexuality, etc.

 

[Townsend]

To protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens, no ?

<not my turn ?...sorry>

That's what I thought.

Isn't constructing laws to govern society's social policies more like taking away peoples rights and freedoms?

 

[vanesch]

Your assertion of stability is ungrounded IMHO.

Care to illuminate your opinion ? This has been studied you know...

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101966008

From the intro:

I am an identical twin. By the time I was four or five, I had begun to notice grown-ups staring at my twin sister and me as they asked us questions. Did I know when Lorna was in trouble? Did we like the same toys? Did I ever think I was Lorna? I remember sitting in the backseat of the family car and comparing hands. We laughed alike and still do. We both like risk, although we display it very differently. She is a hot-air-balloon pilot in Colorado, whereas I discuss emotionally charged issues such as adultery and divorce on television and the podium. She is also an artist. She paints large canvases with tiny bruslistrokes, whereas I move tiny words across hundreds of manuscript pages. Both are jobs that require patience and attention to details. And we both work alone.

So as a child I started, quite unconsciously, to weigh my behavior: How much of it was inherited? How much of it was learned?

Then, in graduate school, I discovered the "nature/nurture" debate. John Locke's concept of the "tabula rasa," or empty tablet, was particularly troubling. Was every infant really a blank sheet of paper on which culture inscribed personality? I didn't believe it.

Then I read Jane Goodall's book In the Shadow of Man, about the wild chimpanzees of Tanzania. These creatures bad different personalities, and they made friends, held hands, kissed, gave one another gifts of leaves and twigs, and mourned when a companion died. I was overcome by the emotional continuity between man and beast. And I became convinced that some of my behavior was biological in origin. So this book is about the innate aspects of sex and love and marriage, those mating traits and tendencies that we inherited from our past. Human behavior is a complex mixture of environmental and hereditary forces and I do not wish to minimize the power of culture in influencing human action. But it is the genetic contributions to behavior that have always intrigued me.

The book began on a New York subway. I was pouring over American marriage statistics and I noticed some peculiar patterns to divorce. I wondered if these same patterns might appear in other cultures. So I looked at divorce data on sixty-two societies contained in the demographic yearbooks of the United Nations; there I found some similar curious designs. Then I examined data on adultery in forty-two cultures. And when I compared these worldwide figures on human bonding with patterns of monogamy, "cheating," and desertion in birds and nonhuman mammals, I found some similarities so compelling that they led me to a general theory for the evolution of human sex and family life.

Why do we marry? Why are some of us adulterous? Why do human beings divorce? Why do we remarry and try our luck again? The book begins with chapters on the nature of courting, infatuation, monogamy, adultery, and divorce. Then, starting in chapter 6, I dial back to the beginning of human social life and trace the evolution of our sexuality from its inception on the grasslands of East Africa some four million years ago, through life among the cave painters of Ice Age Europe and on into contemporary times, both in the West and more "exotic" places.

In the course of presenting my theories, I examine why we fall in love with one person rather than another, the experience of love at first sight, the physiology of attachment and philandering, why men have large penises and women display permanently enlarged breasts, gender differences in the brain, the evolution of "women, men, and power," the genesis of teenage, the origin of our conscience, and many other creations of our human sexual impulse. Finally, in the last chapter, I use all these data to make some predictions about "relationships" tomorrow and, if we survive as a species, millennia from now.

But first a few caveats. Along the way I make many generalizations. Neither your behavior nor mine fits all of the patterns I will describe. Why should it? There is no reason to expect a tight correlation between all human actions and general rules of human nature. I focus on the predominant patterns, rather than on the exceptions.

Moreover, I make no effort to be "politically correct." Nature designed men and women to work together. But I cannot pretend that they are alike. They are not alike. And I have given evolutionary and biological explanations for their differences where I find them appropriate.

I have also resisted some fads in anthropology. It is at present unpopular, for example, to use the !Kung Bushmen of southern Africa as a model for reconstructing life in our hunting-gathering past. My reasons for continuing to use their society as a model are laid out in one of many endnotes that I hope you will have time to read.

Most alarming to some readers, I discuss the possible genetic components and adaptive features of complicated, controversial, and often highly painful social behaviors such as adultery and divorce. I am certainly not advocating infidelity or desertion; rather, I am trying to understand these disturbing facts of human life.

Last, I am an ethologist, one who is interested in the genetic aspects of behavior. Ethologists have, as Margaret Mead once said of the anthropological perspective, a "way of seeing." In my view, human beings have a common nature, a set of shared unconscious tendencies or potentialities that are encoded in our DNA and that evolved because they were of use to our forebears millions of years ago. We are not aware of these predispositions, but they still motivate our actions.

I do not think, however, that we are puppets of our genes, that our DNA determines our behavior. On the contrary, culture sculpts innumerable and diverse traditions from our common human genetic material; then individuals respond to their environment and heredity in idiosyncratic ways that philosophers have long attributed to "free will."

In our drive to understand ourselves, we first studied the sun and moon and stars, then the plants and animals around us. Only in the past two centuries have we scientifically examined our social networks and our minds. Victorians put books by male and female authors on separate shelves. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey made his pioneering studies of American sexuality as recently as the 1950s. And academics have only just begun to inspect the genetic undercurrents of human mating practices. So this book is an attempt to explore the nature of our romantic lives.

There is magic to love—as poets and sweethearts know. I don't pretend to penetrate this sanctum. But our sexual imperatives are tangible, knowable. And I firmly believe that the better we come to understand our human heritage, the greater will be our power over it and the stronger our free will.

 

[cronxeh]

I'm not sure if there is a gene that encodes for bisexuality or homosexuality or heterosexuality, but in either case it would be interesting to find out in a few dozen years. Until then all of your remarks are pretty much pointless and have no meaning or value - considering the implications of such genes on human genome and its sustained existence

The question could, however, remain regarding the current population and their preference for specific minority groups. Do we really need to bring this fuss up and mix it in same bowl with religion, BGLTs, different races, and different classes? If you really want peace on Earth why not start with Mexico, India, and China controlling their population and perhaps we'd talk less about those pathetic issues like gay marriage or abortion rights

 

[faust9]

Care to illuminate your opinion ? This has been studied you know...

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101966008

From the intro:

Too bad you can't read it; moreover, scientiffic studies do not include the following:

15 "Till Death Us Do Part"
Birth of Western Double Standards

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

—Book of Common Prayer ( 1549)

Thwack, thwack, thwack. A giant willow crackled, swayed, then thundered down beside the lake. Trout, perch, pike, chub, and catfish sped below the lily pads and darted among the bulrushes that lined the lake with marsh. A forest boar dashed, stricken, from the underbrush. Ducks and geese and mud hens lifted, flapping, from the reeds. Two otters froze, listening, among the cattails. Someone new was in the woods.

By 5000 b.c. central Europe was strewn with ponds and lakes and streams, signatures of massive glaciers that had retreated north some five thousand years earlier. Surrounding these glacial footprints were deep, thick forests. First birches and pines had spread across the grass. Then oaks, elms, spruce, and fir trees appeared. And by 5000 b.c. beech trees, chestnut trees, ashes, and maples cloaked the river valleys. Where oak trees spread their limbs, light bathed the forest

 

[Art]

The point I'm making is you are trying to tie religion to the word marriage while still allowing for "civil Unions". To bolster your stance you used the Uk as an example to wit I stated we are not in the UK we are in the US. California is not bound by the laws of the UK it is bound by the laws of the US. The laws within the US hold that marriage is a contract---nothing religious---so seperating marriage and civil unions in name only is stupid. They are the same thing just different names so why bother? Because civil unions can be looked down upon(seperate but equal all over again)...

If you read my posts you will see California is the same as the UK and Ireland then in relation to marriage and you would also see that I have never said anything about whether or not the civil union gays, or hetros for that matter, go through should be called a marriage. So what was that you were saying about creating strawman arguments?

 

[TRCSF]

That's what I thought.

Isn't constructing laws to govern society's social policies more like taking away peoples rights and freedoms?

Unless it's a law constructed to give people rights that were not being protected.

 

[loseyourname]

Just a few quick point to make, which I'm sure will be overlooked since this thread seems to be moving so fast.

The original article posted has some blatantly misleading opinions. Arnold is not doing this to pander to the "far-right." He is doing this to pander to the majority of California voters, who already passed a referendum precluding the recognition of homosexual marriages. Arnold is and has always been a populist governor, using the initiative and referendum system more than any other governor in memory. Part of the reason he does this is that he was elected through the initiative system to begin with. The other is that the legislature in California has been notoriously ineffective over the last decade or so, failing to deliver budgets on time, constantly deadlocking and refusing to actually pass any legislation that didn't pander to what might be called the "far-left." Gerrymandering has been so bad in the state that it is impossible to get elected in a majority of districts without appealing to a very liberal sector of the populace that does not represent the actual majority. As a consequence, whereas most voting citizens of the state do not want the recognition of homosexual marriages, most legislators do. Represenation in the state assembly and senate is not doled out evenly.

With that out of the way, my personal position on this is the same as Townsend's. The idea that the government can grant someone the right to form a lifelong union with someone that they love is completely absurd to me. The historical evolution of marriage as a western institution can get a little muddled, as it comes largely from two sources. The ancient Greeks married purely as a means of producing legitimate, state-sanctioned heirs, who could inherit the husband's property. There was no love involved whatsoever; in fact, the idea of a Greek man loving anything other than another Greek man (and usually a Greek boy) was absurd to them. Women were uneducated non-persons that a man could never have any real rapport with. To paraphrase Creon in Antigone, 'there are many other fields he could plow.' A woman was nothing more than a soilbed in which to plant one's seed.

The other concept of marriage from which the western institution has arisen is the Christian conception. I don't know as much about Christianity as I do about the Greeks, but the idea seems to be that one forms a lifelong union with another, whom one loves, to become "one flesh," a single spiritual entity. This single spiritual entity came to be a single legal entity as the Church wove its dogmas into the pagan traditions of pre-medieval Europe, which had inherited from the Greeks the concept of using marriage to produce legitimate heirs. As Arildno points out, this Christian conception was heavily bastardized in the process, as there was in fact no single legal or spiritual entity created. Women still had no rights (unless they were royalty), and the purpose remained to create heirs and to join lands together. Inter-kingdom marriages became a means of creating peace and expanding one's territorial holdings.

It should be clear why the conception legally had to be between one man and one woman. Only a male/female pairing can produce a child, and if multiple partners were allowed, there would be doubt as to which children were the legitimate heirs of which fathers. There is no reason for this conception of the pairing beyond that. In fact, from what I know (correct me if I'm wrong) the Christian conception did not scripturally forbid the love between man and man. It only admonished their lying together as if with a woman. While the idea of love without sex seems strange to us, the biblical conception of love doesn't seem to have much to do with physical lust. In fact, the two seem to be intentionally separated. Lust is a concern of the flesh, whereas love is a purely spiritual thing. The reasoning behind the forbidding of homosexual sex seems to be nothing more than the reasoning behind the forbidding of pre-marital or even just non-procreative sex. Sex was not something to be enjoyed and done for its own purpose. Sex was to be performed only with the intention of creating a child. As homosexual sex could not do this, it was forbidden.

The modern-day conservative argument that we can extrapolate from all this that there is any moral reason to keep marriage as being an institution involving only one man and one woman is absurd. We need real arguments, not simply appeals to tradition and history. The historical reasons for having state-sanctioned marriage at all are gone. The children of any property-owner are the legal inheritors of that person's property whether or not they are legitimately born, and inheritance is not doled out according to birth order; it is doled out according to written wills. We no longer have any feudal system whereby land possessions can be expanded through marriage, and we generally do not have arranged marriages in the first place. The whole idea that the state should sanction marriage because it is beneficial to society to have long-term monogamous couple raising children doesn't seem to be working, either. Let's face it; take one look at the divorce rate and you can see that giving tax benefits is not keeping people together. The modern conception of marriage is strictly that of one person loving another for the rest of their lives. Why should the government grant us the right to love someone? That is not their right to grant.

 

[TRCSF]

I think it's funny that now that people are demanding that homosexuals be allowed to marry, that people are now saying that marriage shouldn't be a function of the state.

As if they had a problem with marriage before homosexuals demanded the right.

It reminds me of those after school programs. The Chess Club, for example. Homosexual students demand the right to be allowed to participate in the Chess Club, and they win the court case, so the school just decides it's going to ban the Chess Club for everybody.

It strikes me as homophobic as any action, and is particularly cowardly.

 

[TRCSF]

The original article posted has some blatantly misleading opinions. Arnold is not doing this to pander to the "far-right." He is doing this to pander to the majority of California voters, who already passed a referendum precluding the recognition of homosexual marriages.

That implies the majority of Californians are bigots. That would be a shame.

Well, thank god the majority can't repress the minority forever.

Back in the seventies, the vast majority of whites were against interracial marriages.

 

[SOS2008]

I would add one modification, which is at one time inheritance passed through the maternal line because it could not be disputed who the mother was.

I think it's funny that now that people are demanding that homosexuals be allowed to marry, that people are now saying that marriage shouldn't be a function of the state.

As if they had a problem with marriage before homosexuals demanded the right.

It reminds me of those after school programs. The Chess Club, for example. Homosexual students demand the right to be allowed to participate in the Chess Club, and they win the court case, so the school just decides it's going to ban the Chess Club for everybody.

It strikes me as homophobic as any action, and is particularly cowardly.

That's in reference to prop 200, and keeping in mind that California traditionally has been a liberal (blue) state with a significant gay population in the SF area, if it hasn't passed there, then where? I think the only state where gay marriage is legal is Massachusetts?

In any event, I see a little difference between this debate and the Chess Club example. As discussed above, the majority of Americans believe in the individual right to lifestyle choices, and as was seen in the Schiavo case, most Americans don't support government intervention in private matters--the flip side being that government-sanctioned laws also represent intervention. Of course many Christians can't see this contradiction, and feel tolerance does not mean condone (like filling birth control prescriptions against one's beliefs). Not that this is my personal position.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I think it's funny that now that people are demanding that homosexuals be allowed to marry, that people are now saying that marriage shouldn't be a function of the state.

As if they had a problem with marriage before homosexuals demanded the right.

It reminds me of those after school programs. The Chess Club, for example. Homosexual students demand the right to be allowed to participate in the Chess Club, and they win the court case, so the school just decides it's going to ban the Chess Club for everybody.

It strikes me as homophobic as any action, and is particularly cowardly.

Perhaps many people didn't think much of the legality of marriage. I myself for a long time did not intended to ever get married and so the thoughts never really occurred to me. Once the debate is brought up of constitutional rights regarding marriage though then one will begin to think on it.

This also necessitates consideration of the precident set that could allow for polygamy if you use equal protection as the cornerstone of your arguement. Polygamists fall under equal protection too. As to empirical evidence that polygamy is not a healthy practice, please show us. Also let us know if your empirical evidence distinguishes between those that are involved in a polygamous relationship knowingly and willingly. I think you only hurt your argument by descriminating against others looking for their marriage rights aswell. Ofcourse it helps you politically to deny those rights to others just as it helps Arnold politically to deny them to same sex couples.(this last part wasn't directed at you TRCSF)

 

[vanesch]

Perhaps many people didn't think much of the legality of marriage. I myself for a long time did not intended to ever get married and so the thoughts never really occurred to me. Once the debate is brought up of constitutional rights regarding marriage though then one will begin to think on it.

Well, I *do* think that there is a "legal" function to marriage, union, whatever one calls it, which has to do with taking into consideration that certain people happen to have a close relationship, which changes the natural context of their relations in legal matters. Their legal relations should then not be exactly the same as between two random strangers.
As has been pointed out here, simple things like visiting right in hospitals (I don't see why just any stranger should be allowed to come and visit - and annoy - me in hospital, but I'd think it to be perfectly normal to have my wife near me), or inheritance rights (if you've lived together for a long time and you've worked together to buy a house, I don't see why you should, upon death of one of the two, have to pay huge taxes to herit half of the house for instance), or some administrative advantages (for instance, all other things equal, having a preference in job location assignments that keep the couple geographically together) and other stuff. It is just a recognition by society that these people have their life together, which is something that can change the application of law in certain cases for the best of everybody. There's no point in having, for instance, a married couple, both in public service, and - if this is possible and doesn't infringe on the rights of others - assign one to a job in one city and the other one in a city 500 km from there. I mean, if you can avoid doing that, why make people unhappy ? But in order to do so, it is normal to assign a legal status to this fact that those people ARE together.
And I fully agree that the sexual nature (and hence the sex of the individuals) of the relationship is no-one's business. But I also claim that the NUMBER of participants, in that case, should be free.

This also necessitates consideration of the precident set that could allow for polygamy if you use equal protection as the cornerstone of your arguement. Polygamists fall under equal protection too. As to empirical evidence that polygamy is not a healthy practice, please show us. Also let us know if your empirical evidence distinguishes between those that are involved in a polygamous relationship knowingly and willingly. I think you only hurt your argument by descriminating against others looking for their marriage rights aswell.

That was my initial point, and it was a bit provocative in order to put gays now "on the other side of the fence" for the sake of argument.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I don't disagree with rights for people in intimate relationships. I think that "Marriage" regardless of it's actual source is generally concidered a religious institution. I don't think that a religious institution should be a legal one as well. Let all people have civil unions. Let all people get married in churches. Just don't expect your religious cerimonies to have merit in a court of law.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Or just cut the religious aspect out of marriage but I think that has already been thuroughly ingrained.

 

[vanesch]

1. The dinks are continuing to rise in numbers...my wife and I will always be dinks

I think I've been misunderstood. I didn't want to argue from socio-genetic arguments that "marriage between 1 man and 1 woman" is what ought to be, I just said that this tradition is something that got through to us from the deep origins of humankind because it was a socio-genetically advantageous strategy for over thousands of years. This was NOT (as I now think some perceived it) an argument against any 1man-1man couple or whatever. Gay couples don't involve in reproduction and so don't get involved in any strategy, and it hence doesn't make any difference whether they are 2, 3, 24 and whether they are faithful or not ; it doesn't influence their transmission of genetic material to the next generation (which is taken care off by their relatives).
If we grew out of elephants, probably we would have considered marriage between members of a group of females natural, where males are not supposed to take part in any lasting relationship. But the fact that we, as humans, have relatively few offspring (10-15 in a whole lifetime), and have to invest several years into their upbringing, makes that the 1male-1female cell is best suited to the task (each having 50% in the genetic assets of the offspring). At least in ancient times, when life was hard and kids easily died because of lack of care.

Now, society has changed so much that this strategy is probably outdated: whether or not a kid's parents stay together, its survival and reproduction chances are not much altered by that. It is not because daddy left, that your chances of dying prematurely as a kid are much increased. So from that moment on, it becomes more interesting for daddy and mommy to go and "spread their genetic material where they can" :-)
But we still have this tradition of marriage surviving from ancient times.

2. There is no shortage of people in the world. In fact I would say some countries could use a lot more homosexuality. Heck, the whole world could use a lot more homosexuals...

In "the selfish gene" Dawkins makes an interesting observation: if, for instance, Latin America's population keeps growing at the current rate, 500 years from now, the continent will be full, in that, everybody standing upright, they will all touch each other, from Patagonia up to the Gulf, and fill up all the land space.
Clearly, no matter what technological improvements we bring to food production and all that, this will of course not happen in practice, and that's why there are 2 natural mechanisms that will regulate this: famine and war. Technological improvements, and medicine are in fact trying to avoid these regulations, and will make the final bang only worse ; it is like trying to avoid small forest fires until there's so much dead wood that you get a huge brazing fire you cannot control anymore.

The problem is that people are not evolving through any process of natural selection. A mentally retarded person who would not likely generate offspring 10k years ago now has a better chance of producing offspring than a lot of normal, intelligent people do.

Hehe, we are! We are *evolving*, but not necessarily to select out what we 'd consider the "best" (intelligent, just, strong, healthy...). We can only temporarily give ourselves the illusion that we now mastered evolution.

THE ANTS ARE WATCHING US AND WILL TAKE OVER

In fact overpopulation is a good reason to bring down the institution of marriage, if the purpose of marriage is in fact to foster a family.

That's not entirely true, because it would lead us to go and fornicate randomly, with LESS investment in our offspring, compensated by having more of them. In fact, probably the best solution is to legally impose (like do the Chinese) a quorum of offspring (like 1 or 2 kids). If you want to get most out of your kids, then again, it is probably best to stay in a monogamous couple.

 

[vanesch]

I don't disagree with rights for people in intimate relationships. I think that "Marriage" regardless of it's actual source is generally concidered a religious institution.

Eh, I am only married for the law, and most people around me too. In fact, we mainly got married for administrative reasons, especially because I was going to live in another country, procedures are much simpler (and sometimes more advantageous) if you are married. Some marry AGAIN a few years later, in church, mostly just for the fun of it to have a big party.

 

[loseyourname]

I think it's funny that now that people are demanding that homosexuals be allowed to marry, that people are now saying that marriage shouldn't be a function of the state.

As if they had a problem with marriage before homosexuals demanded the right.

It reminds me of those after school programs. The Chess Club, for example. Homosexual students demand the right to be allowed to participate in the Chess Club, and they win the court case, so the school just decides it's going to ban the Chess Club for everybody.

It strikes me as homophobic as any action, and is particularly cowardly.

If you must know, I've had homosexual encounters before. I don't consider myself to be a homosexual, but I'm certainly not homophobic. You might not want to assume so much. As long as marriage is a state function, I think anyone and everyone should be allowed to marry whoever they damn well please. But I still don't think, and never have thought, that marriage should be a state function. Thanks for not addressing a single thing I said in my post, by the way.

 

[Smurf]

If you must know, I've been in a homosexual relationship before. You might not want to assume so much. As long as marriage is a state function, I think anyone and everyone should be allowed to marry whoever they damn well please. But I still don't think, and never have thought, that marriage should be a state function. Thanks for not addressing a single thing I said in my post, by the way.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=741025#post741025

 

[vanesch]

If you must know, I've had homosexual encounters before.

Yeah, me too. Each time I go to the garage, and see the bill, I feel screwed

 

[arildno]

Good post, LYN, I'll address it since no one else seems to have done so.
I'll get back to the issue of socio-biology in a later post.

The original article posted has some blatantly misleading opinions. Arnold is not doing this to pander to the "far-right." He is doing this to pander to the majority of California voters, who already passed a referendum precluding the recognition of homosexual marriages. Arnold is and has always been a populist governor, using the initiative and referendum system more than any other governor in memory. Part of the reason he does this is that he was elected through the initiative system to begin with. The other is that the legislature in California has been notoriously ineffective over the last decade or so, failing to deliver budgets on time, constantly deadlocking and refusing to actually pass any legislation that didn't pander to what might be called the "far-left." Gerrymandering has been so bad in the state that it is impossible to get elected in a majority of districts without appealing to a very liberal sector of the populace that does not represent the actual majority. As a consequence, whereas most voting citizens of the state do not want the recognition of homosexual marriages, most legislators do. Represenation in the state assembly and senate is not doled out evenly.

I am sure you know more about the inticacies of Californian politics than me; I tried to tie Arnold's somewhat surprising veto (surprising on basis of his previous "gay-friendly" measures) to a feature pretty much universal in any political party:
You won't get re-elected as a candidate by your party buddies unless you espouse (if not personally agree with) views compatible with their own.
Pandering to the general public of voters will often be a secondary concern; it is more important to secure re-election as candidate, since if you are not a candidate at the time of the public election, your chances of getting elected into office is zero.

With that out of the way, my personal position on this is the same as Townsend's. The idea that the government can grant someone the right to form a lifelong union with someone that they love is completely absurd to me. The historical evolution of marriage as a western institution can get a little muddled, as it comes largely from two sources. The ancient Greeks married purely as a means of producing legitimate, state-sanctioned heirs, who could inherit the husband's property. There was no love involved whatsoever; in fact, the idea of a Greek man loving anything other than another Greek man (and usually a Greek boy) was absurd to them.

Incorrect, or at least, very inaccurate.
Read for example Aeschines poisonous speech before the popular assembly for why a certain person (can't remember his name right now) should not be eligible for office:
1. The fact that this person had willingly submitted in his early youth to the advances of other males was an excusable weakness due to youth, his continuance of the same practice into adulthood made him patently ineligible, a person of INEXCUSABLY loose morals.
2. One of those males to which the person submitted himself in adult years,is characterized by the odd personality , according to Aeschines, of sole attraction to other men, and Aeschines notes that it is typical of these males to retain youthful looks long past what "normal" men (like Aeschines himself) do. (I.e, the folk belief that gay men often look a lot younger than their straight counterpart is not something new; it was circulating in ancient Greece as well)
3. That is, for the Greeks in general, the man/ "boy"-love thing (the "boy" was typically 16-17, the man should ideally not be past 30, the age when he typically came into his inheritance and ought to find a suitable wife) was always a rather problematic thing, but something that could be tolerated.
Men who persisted into old age with fascination for youths could meet quite a lot of ridicule (see for example, Aristofanes' portrayal of Socrates and his ilk in "The Clouds"), and the men called "kinaidoi", who wanted a "passive" role sexually when they were adult were scorned and regarded as unfit citizens.

Aristofanes and Aeschines presented their works towards the GENERAL public, and hence, the attitudes towards sexuality contained in their works should be regarded as more representative of the common view than what Socrates, Plato etc. spoke with their philosophical f*ck-buddies.

It should be clear why the conception legally had to be between one man and one woman. Only a male/female pairing can produce a child, and if multiple partners were allowed, there would be doubt as to which children were the legitimate heirs of which fathers. There is no reason for this conception of the pairing beyond that.

Caveat: Within a PATRIARCHATE, this is true enough, not so with a matriarchate. Our closest relatives, the bonobos, have a matriarchal societal structure, with markedly different unions of coupling.
This seems also to have been the case with human matriarchates.

In fact, from what I know (correct me if I'm wrong) the Christian conception did not scripturally forbid the love between man and man. It only admonished their lying together as if with a woman. While the idea of love without sex seems strange to us, the biblical conception of love doesn't seem to have much to do with physical lust. In fact, the two seem to be intentionally separated.

Correct.
Since no one cares a damn about gods whilst enjoying sex and the pleasant aftermath, it is necessary to restrict peoples' access to sex, and pollute peoples' minds about sex by dubbing them as "sinful pleasures" if you are to gain the sought-after level of control over individuals.


Perhaps I'll address a few of your other points later on.

 

[vanesch]

Since no one cares a damn about gods whilst enjoying sex and the pleasant aftermath,

And what about: "oh my god, this feels goood ? "

 

[arildno]

And what about: "oh my god, this feels goood ? "

Well, then it is the real person you're with who fulfills the role of god for you, more than any scriptural god ever can.

 

[vanesch]

Our closest relatives, the bonobos, have a matriarchal societal structure, with markedly different unions of coupling.

Bonobo life is great:
http://www.primates.com/bonobos/bonobosexsoc.html

From the text:

During reconciliations, bonobos use the same sexual repertoire as they do during feeding time. Based on an analysis of many such incidents, my study yielded the first solid evidence for sexual behavior as a mechanism to overcome aggression. Not that this function is absent in other animals--or in humans, for that matter--but the art of sexual reconciliation may well have reached its evolutionary peak in the bonobo. For these animals, sexual behavior is indistinguishable from social behavior. Given its peacemaking and appeasement functions, it is not surprising that sex among bonobos occurs in so many different partner combinations, including between juveniles and adults. The need for peaceful coexistence is obviously not restricted to adult heterosexual pairs.

 

[Art]

Yeah, me too. Each time I go to the garage, and see the bill, I feel screwed

Stop complaining... just bend over and take it like a man.

 

[arildno]

Human behaviour is not of course completely explained by purely genetic considerations, they only give you AVERAGE tendencies over time scales long enough to have an evolutionary influence. The turn-over rate you talk about are the statistical fluctuations around those long-term averages. So everything that happens only on a time scale of a few hundred years or less will not play a significant role, and it plays less and less a role because our society becomes so terribly complex that it is difficult to say what pattern of behaviour will result in better gene transfer.
So all you can deduce from sociobiology for our species are traditions that must have been the same since we were hunters-gatherers and early civilisations. One of these traditions is the 1-man 1-woman (with some adultery :-) relation, raising their kids (at least for a few years).

You'd better check up on matriarchal traditions. These do not, it seems, follow the 1-1 pattern.

Secondly, and more importantly, to assume a dominating reproductive "drive" behind human actions has very little evidence.

A more rational, and better evidenced theory than assuming that human behaviour are to be seen as primarily reproductive strategies, are to say that human behavior is first and foremost characterized by the motivational factors seeking pleasure and avoiding pain (SPAP-strategies).
Now, this is not arbitrarily chosen, but closely related to the evolution of the neural systems and furtheron, consciousness.

It is important not to conflate the issues here:
It is evidently true that reproductive sex, for example, is pleasurable.
But this is a "fact of consciousness", rather than a motivational drive towards reproduction.
Obviously, an organism devising SPAP-strategies whose way of reproduction is painful will be selected against relative to an organism whose way of reproduction is deemed as pleasurable.
But in no way does it follow that an organism whose sole pleasure in life is the act of reproduction will be reproductively more successful than an organism whose pleasures are many and varied.
That is, by regarding pleasure-seeking and pain-eschewal as the main causes of human behaviour we are not fitting the emperor in "new clothes" i.e, that the set of actions predictably to follow from them is equal to the set of actions which would follow if the reproductive drive was dominant; rather, we are espousing a new principle for explaining behaviour.

There are many human behaviours that are more easily explained as SPAP-strategies; suicide of a youngster, for example, may be seen as a pain-avoidance strategy, it doesn't make much sense as a reproductive strategy.

Monkish celibacy is another case:
By firmly believing that unending bliss will be theirs if they sacrifice a few "minor" pleasures, they are basically involved in a pleasure-seeking strategy.
Again, their behaviour makes little sense from a reproductive view.


Essentially, then, my view is that by the markedly increased neural activity and evolved intelligence, human behaviour has become extremely adaptable to the actual circumstances they live in, or, in other words, their actions are better to be understood as SPAP-responses to experiences, rather than as reproductive strategies.

 

[vanesch]

A more rational, and better evidenced theory than assuming that human behaviour are to be seen as primarily reproductive strategies, are to say that human behavior is first and foremost characterized by the motivational factors seeking pleasure and avoiding pain (SPAP-strategies).

Sure, I don't deny that, on the contrary! As I say somewhere else, I strongly believe in hedonism (which is SPAP, nothing else).

Now, this is not arbitrarily chosen, but closely related to the evolution of the neural systems and furtheron, consciousness.
It is important not to conflate the issues here:
It is evidently true that reproductive sex, for example, is pleasurable.
But this is a "fact of consciousness", rather than a motivational drive towards reproduction.
Obviously, an organism devising SPAP-strategies whose way of reproduction is painful will be selected against relative to an organism whose way of reproduction is deemed as pleasurable.

Exactly. As you point out, SPAP and evolutionary success are not contradictory. In fact, evolutionary strategies always win in the end, so probably SPAP is just ONE of the different possible strategies. And, as you pointed out, NOW our societies are so complex and quickly changing that there is probably no strategy of reproductive success that will be selected for. I mean, the time it takes (several generations) for a particular strategy to be selected for, society has already changed and the strategy isn't optimal anymore in any respect. So probably behavioural influences are not steered anymore now by genetic mechanisms. But we have still the inheritance of the past, when behaviour WAS strongly determining when our ancestors were reproductively successful or not, so the rules of "getting more genes to the next generation" DID count back then.
Now what is special about the human species (apart from its brain) is the VERY LONG PERIOD needed to bring up kids to self-support. It is several years, which is very rare in the animal kingdom. So the 50-50 rule is optimal in that respect.

But in no way does it follow that an organism whose sole pleasure in life is the act of reproduction will be reproductively more successful than an organism whose pleasures are many and varied.
That is, by regarding pleasure-seeking and pain-eschewal as the main causes of human behaviour we are not fitting the emperor in "new clothes" i.e, that the set of actions predictably to follow from them is equal to the set of actions which would follow if the reproductive drive was dominant; rather, we are espousing a new principle for explaining behaviour.

I agree partly with this. The new behavioural rule is correct as long as it doesn't go *radically* against the good old Darwinian behavioural rules. After all, the aim of the game is to win over several generations, so if SPAP behaviour gives an overall gain over several generations, and has, locally, sometimes consequences that seem to be going against Darwinian behavioural rules, then that's still a good strategy.

There are many human behaviours that are more easily explained as SPAP-strategies; suicide of a youngster, for example, may be seen as a pain-avoidance strategy, it doesn't make much sense as a reproductive strategy.

Look what I said above: *locally* these consequences might seem to go against Darwinian imposed rules, but as long as suicide remains a minor phenomenon, and SPAP gives OVERALL advantages to most of its members, it will be selected for.

Monkish celibacy is another case:
By firmly believing that unending bliss will be theirs if they sacrifice a few "minor" pleasures, they are basically involved in a pleasure-seeking strategy.
Again, their behaviour makes little sense from a reproductive view.

I have my own theory that we've been selected for religious behaviour because it gave OVERALL advantages to the group (like working like crazy and obeying to the god-king, hence building a stronger nation and beating up the neighbours), and this monk-behaviour is some of the excess of that - as long as the majority of the group doesn't turn into monks, it is an acceptable price for an overall positive effect on the survival of genetic material.

Essentially, then, my view is that by the markedly increased neural activity and evolved intelligence, human behaviour has become extremely adaptable to the actual circumstances they live in, or, in other words, their actions are better to be understood as SPAP-responses to experiences, rather than as reproductive strategies.

Especially now, I agree. But it shouldn't be in TOO STRONG a conflict with Darwinian selection, because after all, after a few generations it would simply be dying out. So this Darwinian selection STILL plays. And something like the strong social pressure to lead a monogamous relationship is difficult to explain OTHERWISE. There's not much SPAP to it, is there ? The Bonobos have more fun.

 

[DM]

Eh, I am only married for the law, and most people around me too. In fact, we mainly got married for administrative reasons, especially because I was going to live in another country, procedures are much simpler (and sometimes more advantageous) if you are married. Some marry AGAIN a few years later, in church, mostly just for the fun of it to have a big party.

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact of the law being under the influence of religious principles. Furthermore, if you or anyone chooses to marry in a church, you will be subject and forced to accept its policies, irrespective of being for fun or not.

 

[arildno]

Especially now, I agree. But it shouldn't be in TOO STRONG a conflict with Darwinian selection, because after all, after a few generations it would simply be dying out. So this Darwinian selection STILL plays. And something like the strong social pressure to lead a monogamous relationship is difficult to explain OTHERWISE. There's not much SPAP to it, is there ? The Bonobos have more fun.

Again, you ignore the dynamics of matriarchal societies:
Let's look how this can be favorable in a Darwinian sense:
Since it is trivial for a dominant female to know who her own daughters (and sons) are, she doesn't have the slightest inclination to impose a control on the extraneous sexual behaviour of males. As long as she is able to seduce males to bring her and her kids food, say, it would be better for her that the males are so besotted with the thought of getting a vagina award that she can choose whomever she likes.
In this respect, she is in no serious way a rival to her co-sisters; they can distribute the silly males between themselves in an amicable manner.

Furthermore, let's look at it from the male perspective:
Vagina is good. Really, really good. If I spread my seed as much as possible among as many females as possible, then I've got a really good chance that several of the babies born will be mine; just in case, I'll be nice to the female and all her kids (otherwise, she might join her sisters on a vagina-strike against me, reducing my chances of getting more babies).

This is a perfectly well-functioning system; that is to say:
From a Darwinian perspective it is UNDETERMINED whether patriarchal or matriarchal societies will represent the best reproductive strategy overall; the clinching issue will be provided by those SPAP-strategies seen as most feasible to the individual.

 

[vanesch]

Again, you ignore the dynamics of matriarchal societies:
Let's look how this can be favorable in a Darwinian sense:
Since it is trivial for a dominant female to know who her own daughters (and sons) are, she doesn't have the slightest inclination to impose a control on the extraneous sexual behaviour of males. As long as she is able to seduce males to bring her and her kids food, say, it would be better for her that the males are so besotted with the thought of getting a vagina award that she can choose whomever she likes.
In this respect, she is in no serious way a rival to her co-sisters; they can distribute the silly males between themselves in an amicable manner.

Furthermore, let's look at it from the male perspective:
Vagina is good. Really, really good. If I spread my seed as much as possible among as many females as possible, then I've got a really good chance that several of the babies born will be mine; just in case, I'll be nice to the female and all her kids (otherwise, she might join her sisters on a vagina-strike against me, reducing my chances of getting more babies).

This is a perfectly well-functioning system; that is to say:
From a Darwinian perspective it is UNDETERMINED whether patriarchal or matriarchal societies will represent the best reproductive strategy overall; the clinching issue will be provided by those SPAP-strategies seen as most feasible to the individual.

I agree entirely that there are different good strategies. I'd say as long as there are no important possessions in a tribal society, as a male, you just fornicate as much as you can, and as a female you "prostitute" in a way to get things done by males (that's about what you describe). There's something to say for that, and as long as raising a few more or less kids doesn't change much, there is no problem. In fact, some of our behaviour goes in that direction :-)

But I think the caveat comes when there's only a finite amount of stuff you can distribute amongst your kids: this goes from who is going to inherit your stuff to the time you can invest in them, their food etc... The system you describe works very well in a "luxury" environment. When you just have a lot of kids and you estimate that some are yours, as long as you don't have to make huge efforts to have them survive, there's no problem. However, if conditions are harsher this doesn't work. From the moment that investing more in one, means, investing less in another one, you'd prefer, as a male, that you only invest in YOUR OWN kids. For instance, if you are a farmer, which kids are going to take over the farm ? Just dividing your land in as much kids as there are is probably not your best strategy. Having land, for a farmer, means more chances of survival. You want to give your land only to those few who are really your kids. This is different from just jumping from tree to tree and pick a few bananas, which you distribute amongst the kids, to get a great time with their mommy.

 

[arildno]

But I think the caveat comes when there's only a finite amount of stuff you can distribute amongst your kids: this goes from who is going to inherit your stuff to the time you can invest in them, their food etc... The system you describe works very well in a "luxury" environment. When you just have a lot of kids and you estimate that some are yours, as long as you don't have to make huge efforts to have them survive, there's no problem. However, if conditions are harsher this doesn't work. From the moment that investing more in one, means, investing less in another one, you'd prefer, as a male, that you only invest in YOUR OWN kids. For instance, if you are a farmer, which kids are going to take over the farm ? Just dividing your land in as much kids as there are is probably not your best strategy. Having land, for a farmer, means more chances of survival. You want to give your land only to those few who are really your kids. This is different from just jumping from tree to tree and pick a few bananas, which you distribute amongst the kids, to get a great time with their mommy.

1. To develop a healthy bisexuality in the population at large will mean that from a SPAP-perspective you get lots of new pleasures to choose from, and by thereby (presumably) limiting the frequency on strictly heterosexual relationships you will limit the number of kids being born, so that adverse effects of over-population relative to available resources are reduced (which is not in contradiction with natural selection)
2. From a FEMALE perspective, the matriarchate structure should always be preferable; whether or not this structure is overthrown by males is a historical contingency.

 

[vanesch]

1. To develop a healthy bisexuality in the population at large will mean that from a SPAP-perspective you get lots of new pleasures to choose from, and by thereby (presumably) limiting the frequency on strictly heterosexual relationships you will limit the number of kids being born, so that adverse effects of over-population relative to available resources are reduced (which is not in contradiction with natural selection)
2. From a FEMALE perspective, the matriarchate structure should always be preferable; whether or not this structure is overthrown by males is a historical contingency.

I agree with 2.
Overpopulation, though, is only a very recent problem ! And since it is a problem, there are birth control methods which are more effective on the short term than waiting until this bisexuality is eventually selected for. In fact, it doesn't even work, because the society that limits its own growing population will be crushed by the neighbours who grow uncontrolled.