I see that Justin Katz has established a new blog-home at Dust in the Light and generously linked to Master of None. Among his first posts is an excellent deconstruction of Andrew Sullivan's recent disingenuous writing about gay marriage that reminds me yet again why I stopped visiting Mr. Sullivan's site -- not because I disagree with him (although I do), but because I became dizzy from his constant spinning. Mr. Katz also has an excellent post about marriage and necessity, and remembers "the exact moment that I realized, back when my wife and I were just dating, that I had to choose right then between staying or leaving. Postponing the decision would have been callous and unfair."
By the way, his site will be easier to read once you click the "Turn Light On" link near the top of his sidebar. The initial black-on-light color scheme is a bit hard on the eyes, in my humble opinion.
I agree. I don't mind the disagreement so much as the endless and sheer sophistry he uses to beat his dead horse.
His site is just one constant advertisement of his libido - gimme gimme gimme all sodomy all the time, it's what I will always want.
I'll admit that I too have stopped reading Andrew Sullivan's posts regarding gay marriage, so I cannot offer an opinion on the correctness of the charges. I stopped reading them because they no longer seemed to me to be germane to the real point: there is simply no moral or ethical argument against gay marriage. Certainly some people may dislike it [as Mr. Butterworth does] and various religions may condemn it, but neither of those is a moral argument. Nor does it matter how many people agree or disagree with a moral position; history shows us that majorities have all to frequently embraced perfectly horrible positions. The concept of gay marriage is just as good and moral as the concept of current heterosexual marriage; they are functionally identical — to embrace one is to embrace the other; to condemn one is to condemn the other. Disliking gay marriage is matter of personal preference and only that; it is not a moral position and not, under our Constitution, a legally actionable one.
COJ: Well, rather than get into that argument here, I'll simply refer you to two posts I wrote about civil unions which explain why they (and gay marriage) would be bad policy, aside from any moral concerns.
There's also the mathematical proof that there is no "stable marriage" solution to groups without a binary partition such as gender.
Morality isn't the only basis for objecting to gay marriages or civil unions.
Can you please send me a link to [or the paper itself] this mathematical proof that there is no "stable marriage" solution to groups without a binary partition such as gender? As a physicist, I must check this out.
COJ: Sorry, I sure meant to put a link in there. Here's the post I wrote previously on the stable marriage problem.
Thanks Michael,
That's an interesting post but I think it breaks down on the question of monogamy. It also does not consider bisexuality, with influences the choice of partners and monogamy, especially in women. If a significant percentage [say 10%] of the women choose to have both male and female partners at the same time, the proof I think blows up.
But I see the assumption of monogamy as the biggets problem. The proof and the statistics cited equate stability with monogamy, which is a socially false definition. Many relationships , even most, depending on the society, are not strictly monogamous. What the data cited on gay men says is that they tend to be less monogamous, not less stable in terms how long relationships are mutually acceptable [eg happy]. History is pretty clear that non-monogamous relationships are as least as stable, possibly more stable, than strictly monogamous ones. A number of sociological and anthropological studies show the same thing, as do primate studies.
Also lacking from the data is the effect of marriage on promiscuity; it may reduce it, so comparing married persons to unmarried persons may not be valid. Throw out married men and the promiscuity gap might shrink. Also, take an average over several cultures and the gap would also change -- in many parts of Africa, young straight males are vastly more promiscuous than either gay or straight males in the US. Finally the data cited applies to only gay men; lesbians are not mentioned.
Taken together, I stand by the assertion the gay relationships are statistically just as stable as straight relationships, and that the proof holds only if bisexuality is ignored and stability is defined in a socially irrelevant fashion.
Oh sure, real life is never as neat as mathematics, however if you'll look closely you'll see that the stable marriage problem does indeed take promiscuity and monogomy into account in its definition. Man A ends up with Woman A because she's the best (by his rating) women available to him (that is, willing to be with him after being shunned by men she rates more highly).
To state the thrust of your objection more precisely, the two main factors the model doesn't take into account are:
1. real preferences change over time
2. there is a functionally infinite pool of potential mates, so a higher-preference mate could show up "later" (although the model iteslf doesn't have a real sense of time in it)
Both of these can lead to the effects you describe, which is why it's important for people to meet a lot of potential mates before picking one. That reduces the possible gains to be had from (2) above, although (1) is always a factor.
Nevertheless, your objections are somewhat beside the point. No non-partitioned space can have a stable marriage (remember, a "stable marriage" in the model is really what we'd consider a set of marriages between all members in the pool), whereas a binarily-partitioned space will always have a stable solution. Your objections basically say "no, neither one will be stable due to outside factors", but the mathematics still explain the reasons why homosexual relationships tend to be much more ephemeral than heterosexual.
I'm not sure what you base your final assertion on, since statistics clearly demonstrate that homosexuals (males, particularly) have shorter and more relationships than hetersexuals.
Rereading the proof, I still think it misconstrues how human relationships actually work; what constitutes a match, the different views of men and women on what a match is, and the number of acceptable matches. How does the model deal with pural marriage, which is historically the most common type? The current American version of family and marriage is recent, and in the view of some scholars, an aberation. If the proof is just that, why does it reflect conditions that are not typical of human experience? I may be missing something here but the proof appears not to bear meaningful resemblace to reality, and therefore does not explain that reality.
But my main problem is this statement: "the mathematics still explain the reasons why homosexual relationships tend to be much more ephemeral than heterosexual." My research concludes that statement is simply not true. How can the math explain a conclusion that is wrong?
I based my final assertion on statistics, interviews, and case histories and a number of external indicators [cohabitation agreements, joint back accounts, joint major purchases, adoption proceeding, joint child rearing etc] since 1980. There are a great deal of data & statistics out there that are old, extrapolated from old data; measuring the wrong things or misintrepreting [like number of sexual partners], that are biased. Data from Europe don't seem to be used much by American researchers. So quite frankly, much of the data is a mess and has to be approached carefully. Many people are using the data to support a position they already believe in, so they tend to filter and slant it accordingly.
Also, there are a whole host of external factors that also effect the quality of gay relationships, social acceptance being the prime one. AIDS had a huge effect amoung gay men, but much less among lesbians. The gay attitudes have been changing and this is having an effect on the dynamics of gay relationships; there is currently a "generation" gap between gays under 30 and those over 40. The dating habits of the under-30 crowd appear to be identical to single heterosexuals of that group; the over-40 crowd's dating habits are more shaped by history of social stigma, 80-style activism, and AIDS. All this has to be taken into account. When it is all taken into account [and more besides], it leads conclusively, I believe. to my previous assertion.
BTW: I hope one day to pull all this into a fairly comprehensive monograph. If I ever manage that, I'd be happy to share it with you.
COJ: Well you sound like you've done a lot more research on the topic than I have, but my understanding of the facts doesn't match up with yours. I would be interested in reading your paper when it's done.
As for plural marriage: although I think many cultures have accepted plural marriage, I think that the vast majority of marriages have always been 1-to-1. Or do you mean to say that there's ever been a culture where the majority of marriages were plural?
Granted, no model can entirely represent reality, particularly anything as complicated as human coupling. The real question is whether or not the differences so overwhelm the model that it's entirely useless; you may think so, but I don't. I think the model can still give us some useful insight into how relationships work within a society.
Mr. Williams,
If you understood the mathematics that you cite to support your position, then you'd see that it has nothing to do with the discussion.
Stanley Selkow
SS: No, if you understood the mathematics that I cite to support my position, then you'd see that it has everything to do with the discussion.
If you'd care to make a more substantial criticism, I'd be happy to read it.